This week I am in
Washington, DC, so I have been watching a lot of baseball with my sons. That has inspired another edition of “ASEAN
Around the Horn,” a wrapup of recent events in ASEAN.
First, this past weekend saw
the
ASEAN foreign ministers hold their annual formal meeting in Brunei. Again, the best thing that happened in Brunei
is that nothing much happened in another “no- drama” meeting run by ASEAN Chair
Brunei. That is to be much appreciated
after the controversial ASEAN meetings last year under then-ASEAN Chair
Cambodia, especially given the usual tinder for controversy (the South China
Sea) and the controversy of the season (the haze) for this year’s meeting. For more on my own take on the ASEAN foreign
ministers’ meeting and its interaction with the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC),
please see this
posting at WSJ.com which quotes me.
Second,
Singapore hosted the annual ASEAN Competition Conference, with the host
nation urging the grouping to harmonize their competition laws. Effective cooperation and administration of
competition laws will be necessary once ASEAN establishes a single market for
goods and services in the AEC. However,
since the single production base is much more important for the AEC than the
single market (and is developing much faster), and since competition laws in
ASEAN range from the robust to non-existent, it will be some time before ASEAN
develops an effective regional competition policy for the AEC. Furthermore, although competition law and
politics/policy are always intertwined, ASEAN members need to make the
application of their competition laws more objective. Otherwise, trading partners and the business
community may view such laws as serving protectionist goals; Indonesia’s use of
the competition laws against Singaporean-owned companies in banking and
telecoms are but one example.
Third, National University
of Singapore Law School held the first of its plenary sessions on ASEAN
Integration Through Law (I am participating in the third session in August in
Hanoi). Singaporean
Foreign Minister K. Shanmugam focused on harmonization of legal standards and
improving legal frameworks. These
are of course important but regular readers of this blog will know that I am
supporter of even deeper institutional improvements in ASEAN.
Fourth, former
ASEAN Secretary Surin Pitsuwan spoke about exactly this need to improve the
ASEAN institutions, particularly the ASEAN Secretariat. He also spoke of increasing funding for the
Initiative for ASEAN Integration, which could serve as a structural fund for
development (if properly funded).
Unfortunately, not much has been happening on either front, particularly
with regard to Dr. Surin’s confidential report on institutional reforms in
ASEAN, which he had submitted before his term as ASEAN Secretary General ended.
