In brief, ASEAN countries want to become a EU-like organization. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, created at the end of the 1960s, would act as one bloc in international negotiations as far as the topics concerning the international trade and investment are on the table. This integration will come at the top of some already existing free-trade agreement among its ten member-states. If approved, this new phase of economic cooperation would be a fact by 2015. There are already signals that this commitment may not be given a green light. Different domestic economic conditions, plus different international environment will make ASEAN an unlikely follower of the European Union.

In today's world one thing is to do something, another thing is for somebody to pretend being able to do something. In the case with ASEAN, a ten-member regional bloc created exactly 4 decades ago, pretending for creation of a EU-like trade bloc may bring some benefits to some of the members without hurting the interests of any of them. The analysis why they would pretend to become a unified trade bloc may require another article. Here we would discuss why, after all, it would be impossible for them to recreate the EU level of integration in Southeast Asia.

As of the genesis of both the EU and ASEAN, they look remarkably similar. The main cause was the Cold War, their side was with the West, and the chief architects were the political analysts from the State Department in Washington. Here the similarities end. Europe was definitively divided between the West and the East in 1945; the threat to use nuclear weapons in case of breaching this divide was credible from both sides; the Western Europe was democratized 'from abroad'; and two stronger countries in this part of Europe, Germany and France, would become natural allies and pillars for the new continental structure. Asia wasn't definitively divided between the West and the East in 1945, the division was rather fluid; the threat to use nuclear weapons was never taken seriously; the 'western' part of Asia wasn't democratized; there were no natural pillars for economic integration within the original members of ASEAN.

There are certain similarities regarding the ability of both regional structures to incorporate some of their former enemies. The EU with some reluctance took on board the Central and Eastern Europe, including three former Soviet republics. The ASEAN, with less reluctance and much faster took some former or current communist or socialist states on board, e.g. Vietnam, Laos, Burma, and Cambodia. The differences are, however, significant. The EU crossed the point of 'no-return' of economic integration during the Cold War, somewhere in the 1960s, i.e. far before the current enlargements. At that time, the international economic environment was far from favorable for the free trade; therefore the integration between the EU member-states was the only fast option for increasing the international trade, and prosperity. As for the ASEAN, it isn't clear that such point of 'no-return' has been crossed. In addition to that, today's international environment is more favorable for free trade strategies outside trade blocs. Regional integrations aren't the only options that many states, especially in Asia, have.

If the EU can teach some important lesson, it's the following; good economic integration happens only between countries sharing some basic philosophy for development, both economic and political. Putting together countries politically as different as Burma and the Philippines is a recipe for failure.

--------------------

See also the directory of companies providing real estate services in, and general real estate information of Asia.