ASEAN Roundtable 2015 – ASEAN Community 2015: Expectations and Realities

ASEAN will announce an integrated community by the end of 2015.  This announcement is the culmination of regional integration efforts since the elaboration of the ASEAN Vision 2020 statement in 1997.  The success of the ASEAN Community is premised upon how regional collaboration will link together the different aspirations in the political, economic and social spheres, which ASEAN has named the ASEAN Political Security Community (APSC), the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), and the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (ASCC).

With the date for announcing this integrated community imminently approaching, it is timely to “look back to look forward” by seeking the views and suggestions of persons and entities deeply involved in the ASEAN community-building process through its successive stages.

• ASEAN’s push for expansion of ASEAN membership, and the enunciation of the ASEAN Vision 2020 for a seamless and connected community of nations in Southeast Asia;
• The measures undertaken by ASEAN in the financial and economic sectors to remain relevant and recover from the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis that swept through the region;
• The decision to move for a more rules-based and coherent organization, by revisiting a long-standing proposal for the ASEAN Charter, and the subsequent moves to address human rights issues relevant to regional cooperation, and engage in a more meaningful way with civil society in the region;
• The different challenges posed to ASEAN’s central role and the tensions of maintaining ASEAN’s unity of purpose at the regional level with individual (national) interests of each ASEAN member state; and
• The emerging cross-cutting priorities that require ASEAN integration – especially regional economic integration – to be contextualized and communicated as a coordinated exercise.

The ASEAN Roundtable 2015 will 1) provide an update on the issues surrounding ASEAN’s community-building goals beyond 2015; and 2) bring together different perspectives on, and discuss ways and means of addressing these cross-cutting priorities as well as the implications of pursuing these priorities.

Key discussions and recommendations from the Roundtable will be synthesized into a policy-relevant monograph.

Panelists and participants envisaged for this year’s Roundtable include past and present Secretaries-General of ASEAN[1], and a representative mix of policy, business and research expertise dealing with different aspects of ASEAN cooperation.

The Roundtable is supported by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS).

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[1] These are the Secretaries-General who have been accorded the rank of minister and the expanded role and responsibilities to represent and coordinate ASEAN cooperation, as determined in 1992. 

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