By Patryk Pawlak & Eleni Ekmektsioglou
Speaking recently at Chatham House, Herman van Rompuy – president of the European Council – used a theatrical metaphor to refer to Europe’s role on the world stage. He said: “faced with the new play of global interdependence and global governance, we [the EU] need a presence in all the world’s regions.” While acknowledging the importance of Asia for European interests, his message about Europe’s influence in that part of the world was straightforward: “Europe is clearly not a Pacific power and will not become one.”
Catherine Ashton, the EU’s chief diplomat, delivered a more confident message during her visit to Asia earlier this year, stating that developing comprehensive relations with Asia is one of the EU’s major strategic objectives and that the EU wants to be an “active and constructive” player in Asian regionalism. To bring van Rompuy’s metaphor to modern times, in a movie about the politics of the Asia-Pacific region, would Europe play a leading role or only be a background actor?
The foundations of an EU strategy for the region were laid in 2007, when the Council published the East Asia policy guidelines. A revision of the document has been on the EU agenda for some time, but a final agreement on the outcome has yet to be reached, which leaves the club of 27 with policy prescriptions that are often outdated. The EU’s ties to the region are significant: the European Union is China’s biggest and ASEAN’s third biggest trading partner. It’s also the largest investor in ASEAN countries with an average of 20.6 percent of foreign direct investment over the past three years. The scope of the EU’s cooperation with the region is broad and encompasses not only a number of Free Trade Agreements – either already in force (South Korea) or under negotiation (ASEAN, India, Malaysia, Singapore, and Japan) – but also bilateral summits, participation in regional fora, and parliamentary dialogues with Asian officials.
Read the full story at The Diplomat