Alfredo C. Robles, Jr.,International Studies Department, De La Salle University - Manila, 29 August 2006

1. After a decade, one is hard put to argue that ASEM should be given more time to prove itself. The time has come to draw up a balance sheet of ASEM. 

I. The Rationale of ASEM

2. The EU's main concern in East Asia, as in other regions of the developing world, has been market access, as the Commission very frankly announced in its Market Access Strategy (the latter was published one month before ASEM 1).[1]

3. Market access could be achieved by convincing the Asians to modify their laws and regulations, as announced in the EU's New Asia Strategy,[2] and by using ASEM as a forum to facilitate negotiations in other international fora (mainly the WTO),[3] without ASEM itself becoming a negotiating forum.

4. Development cooperation was not part of the ASEM agenda, on the ground that ASEM is a meeting between equals.[4]

5. The more developed East Asian countries - Japan, South Korea, and Singapore - support the EU's call for a new WTO round.

6. Thailand and Singapore were reportedly concerned to neutralize the threats of a Fortress Europe.[5]

7. Political dialogue was included in ASEM, because there would have been an outcry in Europe if it had not been part of the ASEM agenda.[6]

8. Cultural issues were put on the agenda, because of the interest of business people in familiarizing themselves with Asian business culture.[7]

II. The Balance Sheet of ASEM

    A. Economic Cooperation

9. The term economic cooperation is misleading because there have been no projects implemented within the ASEM framework, similar to the European Community Investment Partners (ECIP) program or the Asia-Invest.[8]

10. The EU has sought to achieve its aims by urging the Asians:

 - to implement their Uruguay Round commitments;

- to support the launching of a new WTO round, which would cover the four Singapore issues (trade facilitation, investment, competition, and government procurement);

- to implement the allegedly non-binding plans that cover two of the four Singapore issues: The Trade Facilitation Action Plan (TFAP) and the Investment Promotion Action Plan (IPAP).

11. In spite of the language of official communiqués, the reality is that the developed countries (the EU, Japan, South Korea and Singapore) and the developing countries (all the other Asian participants) have been divided on the appropriateness of the launching of a new WTO Round. Thus, expressions of agreement within ASEM have been constantly contradicted by the actual behavior of states at the WTO.

12. Within ASEM, two Singapore issues were taken up: trade facilitation and investment promotion. Two lists were prepared: "Consolidated and Prioritised List of the Major Generic Barriers to Trade" under the TFAP and "Most Effective Measures for Attracting Foreign Direct Investment" under TFAP. The two lists were supposedly voluntary, yet a process of reporting on the implementation of the two lists was initiated.

13. However, the EU was not receptive to dissenting comments made by the Asians, thus belying the idea of a dialogue. For example, Malaysia criticized the EU for being the most active user of anti-dumping measures and countervailing measures on imports from Asian countries. Japan objected that it could not automatically accept the results of conformity assessment in exporting countries without knowledge of the technical competence of the relevant bodies in the latter. China reported that it would adopt international standards, except if they were unacceptable because of fundamental climatic or geographical factors or fundamental technological problems.[9]

14. In 2002 some participants (probably Asian) asserted that ASEM's goals should be linked with the WTO, implying that  they wished to wait for the outcome of WTO negotiations before they could consider reducing their trade barriers within the ASEM process. The problem with ASEM is that the Asian (developing) states were being asked to liberalize trade and investment, for which they could not obtain concessions from the EU in return. However, other states (probably the EU) wished to continue with the TFAP regardless of the increasing reluctance of the first group of states.[10] Between 2003 and 2006, no meetings on TFAP and IPAP appear to have been held, suggesting a slowing-down of the process.

15. Development cooperation has not been discussed at all within ASEM.

16.  Industrial cooperation was proposed by the Asia-Europe Cooperation Framework adopted at ASEM 3 in Seoul in 2000 and by Vietnam, the host of the Economic Ministers' meeting in 2001. Industrial cooperation would have identified priority industrial sectors (agrotechnology, food processing, biotechnology, high technology, information technology, energy and environmental engineering).[11] In spite of this interest, no proposal for industrial cooperation has ever been considered within the ASEM process.

17. ASEM is once more in search of an economic rationale. The Council for Asia-Europe Cooperation suggested cooperation in energy security.[12] A Task Force for Closer Economic Partnership between Asia and Europe suggested that ASEM facilitate the long-term development of transportation, communications, water and energy infrastructure, in the "societies forming the land bridge linking Europe with Asia".[13] It is not sure if these societies were consulted during the preparation of the report of the Task Force.

18. An ASEM Trust Fund was set up by ASEM 2 (London, 1998). Reports of the first phase reveal that the World Bank simply integrated the ATF grants into its projects for privatization of the water sector in Indonesia[14] and of the subsidized housing sector in the Philippines.[15] The World Bank also attempted to use the ATF in order to gain a foothold in Malaysia.[16] The World Bank itself admitted that ownership of the ATF projects was a problem.[17]

19. No progress has been made on AESM dialogue regarding reform of the international financial architecture. At a meeting of ASEM Finance Ministers held in Kobe, Japan, in 2001, the Korean Finance Minister argued that capital exporting countries had to share the burden of the reform and that developing countries had to be allowed to participate in decisions on the reform.[18] The only outcome of ASEM dialogue is the Kobe Research Project, which recommended the adoption of an Asian currency basket system and the development of an Asian bond market.[19]

20. Notwithstanding strenuous lobbying efforts by trade unions and NGOs, particularly in the runup to ASEM 4 in Copenhagen (2002) and to ASEM 5 in Hanoi (2004), the EU Commission has very clearly stated that no social pillar will be set up and that social issues would be discussed within the framework of TFAP and IPAP Activities.

    B. Political Dialogue

21. It is the "political dialogue" that justifies, more than any other ASEM activity, the criticism of ASEM as a talk shop. In 2004, the Foreign Ministers' Meeting discussed multilateralism, non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, Korea, Iraq, the Middle East, Myanmar, the WTO, sustainable development, the dialogue of cultures and civilizations, international public health, and migration.[20] That said, cooperation on terrorism may become the main focus of the political dialogue.

22. The EU was able to make two concrete contributions to East Asian security, through the Korea Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) and through assistance to East Timor, without resorting to ASEM.

23. The ASEM declarations on the Korean peninsula were a product of serendipity - the Korean president was awarded the Nobel Prize on the eve of ASEM 3 in Seoul (2000).

24. The Foreign Ministers themselves implicitly recognize the problems of political dialogue. In 2002, they declared that their agendas, should be focused, with a few topics, in order to assure an "ASEM value-added".[21] In 2005, they stressed hat their agenda would henceforth be focused on "a few key international and global issues of mutual interest or essential in order to ensure better coordination among partners."[22]

25. Human rights issues were relegated to cultural dialogue, a notable triumph for China, as Sebastian Bersick has pointed out.

    C. Cultural Dialogue

26. Discussions on human rights issues have been limited to repetition of well-known positions. For example at the Fourth ASEM Seminar on Human Rights, the developing (Asian) countries contended that cheap labor was their natural advantage, while the developed (European) countries depicted cheap labor as a distortion of labor markets. They then agreed that the ILO was the proper forum to take up labor issues.[23] In other words, it was a mistake to bring them up for dialogue at the ASEM Informal Seminar in the first place.

27. Civil society is said to have a greater presence in the ASEM informal seminars on human rights, but if one examines the composition of the delegations of ASEM participants, one sees that "civil society" is often represented primarily by academics.

III. Areas for Action

     A. The Negotiation of Cooperation and Partnership Agreements (CPA) with the EU

28. With the negotiation and conclusion of free-trade agreements between Japan and several Southeast Asian countries, the EU is worried that its firms will be at a competitive disadvantage. Consequently, the EU offered in 2004 to negotiate CPAs with Singapore and Thailand, hoping that other East Asian states will follow. The suspension of the WTO Round is also likely to spur EU efforts to obtain at the regional level the concessions that it has failed to obtain at the multilateral level. Unlike its offers to Mercosur (the Southern Cone Common Market) and the ACP (African, Caribbean and Pacific) countries, the EU wishes first that the laws and regulations of Asian countries be harmonized with EU laws and regulations, before considering the possibility of free trade. In other words, the Asian countries would give away their few bargaining chips, without any guarantee that the EU would "reward" them with free trade. Japan, at least, is offering free trade, increased ODA, and other concessions in return for further liberalization of trade and investment by Southeast Asian countries. It is also to be expected that Japanese firms will set up plants in Southeast Asia. European firms, on the other hand, are more likely to continue exporting to East Asia, and to penetrate East Asian service sectors than to establish greenfield plants in the region.

     B. The Renewal of the ATF

29. The second phase of the ATF is ending in 2006. In 2005, China and Thailand declared that a new facility should be envisaged that would be delinked from the Asian financial crisis and would be based on emerging needs of ASEM participants. Predictably the EU states immediately declared that they were in no position to support the idea.[24]

30. The fact that China supports the proposal lends weight to it. If it prospers, fresh financing might be available from the EU.

31. The risk is that the World Bank might be asked once more to administer the fund.

      C. Bilateral Discussions of ODA

32. The EU prepares multiyear Country Strategy Papers (CSP) for individual countries and regional organizations (e.g., ASEAN, Mercosur), on the basis of which ODA is granted to the recipient. For preparation and implementation of the CSR, regular dialogues are held with the latter, which are of course held behind closed doors.

33. One means for civil society organizations of exerting concrete influence on the Asia-Europe dialogue would entail lobbying the national government of the beneficiary before dialogue actually takes place with the EU.

34. Another possibility would involve establishing contacts with the beneficiaries in the course of project identification, evaluation and implementation.

    D. The European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR)

35. Under the EIDHR, the EU grants substantial amounts of money (more than the UN and its specialized agencies could grant) to NGOs in developing countries for projects that support democratization and the rule of law, pluralist civil society, and certain target groups (e.g., victims of torture, women, children and young people, journalists and media professionals). To be eligible for funding, these NGOs must have linkages with European NGOs.

36. Undoubtedly, NGOs from authoritarian Asian countries will  encounter formidable obstacles in any attempts to establish linkages with European NGOs. Nevertheless, accessing EU funds under the EIDHR would be one way of forcing the EU to make good on its claim that it supports democracy and human rights in the developing world.

Concluding Remarks

37. The chances that the EU will modify its polices towards ASEM and towards civil society are slim, since they are guided by the same considerations that underlie EU policies towards all regions of the developing world. Even in EU relations with Mercosur, whose members are all democratic countries (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela), civil society organizations have not been afforded a significant voice.[25] In Asia, the EU has the perfect pretext not to grant them such a voice: the authoritarian Asian governments are opposed to it.

38. Instead of seeking to promote cooperation in a wide range of areas among all Asian and all European countries at the same time, states and civil society organizations might find it wiser to follow the European practices of variable geometry (géométrie variable) (different groups of countries and civil society organizations cooperate for different purposes) and several speeds (plusieurs vitesses)(a group of countries and civil society organizations cooperates on the same issue but to varying degrees).