Interregional Divergence of EU-ASEAN Relations: Achievements, Challenges and External Influences

ABSTRACT: Interregionalism is a pragmatic strategy of the EU’s external action and a tool to extend norms and European values to the developing world as well as a tool in the promotion of global governance. In this sense, the EU has built several interregional and trans-regional frameworks around the developing world in Asia, Africa and Latin America. However, this work focuses on the interregionalism as a tool of the EU to promote regional governance in East Asia, by examining the case of EU-ASEAN interregional relations. The work negotiates the internal function of interregionalism in EU-ASEAN bilateral relationship, its achievements and the challenges of the bilateral-interregional relationship and, in parallel, deals with the external influences in EU-ASEAN interregionalism, referring to the great and regional powers (specifically the US and China) and their attitudes towards interregionalism as promoted by the EU to ASEAN. 

KEYWORDS: European Union (EU), Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), interregional bilateralism, internal functions, great powers