The Asean Community: Dilemma's of a Shallow Trading Club

After three decades of growing 'economic and development cooperation' as well as regular, institutionalized foreign policy consultation between the EU and ASEAN, the two can be regarded as distant but warm friends. ASEAN has embraced the EU as a Dialogue partner and ensured its membership in the Asian Security Forum. ASEAN and the EU have founded ASEM and are strong supporters of the Asia –Europe Foundation. Even in the WTO, ASEAN has helped the EU in the late 1990s to push through the Financial Services Agreement, after the US had basically refused to act on it. Already since the mid-1980s, numerous programmes, workshops, business summits and other initiatives have promoted business links between companies of the two regions, while fostering FDI into ASEAN.