ASEAN told to learn from EU’s mistakes
The Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) should “not copy the EU common market concept,” a senior envoy of the European Union (EU) has urged the bloc, saying that the single market to be implemented by ASEAN should be based on the economic levels of the association’s members.
EU Ambassador to Indonesia, Brunei Darussalam and ASEAN Julian Wilson said on April 18 that the EU had proved that a single market could bring economic advantages to its members, but it also made mistakes.
“I don’t like the idea of saying that ASEAN can learn from what we have done because in fact we made some mistakes. ASEAN can learn from our mistakes as well as learn from our success,” he told reporters on the sideline of EU-ASEAN Economic and Policy Forum.
The forum discussed the assumption that the main difference between ASEAN and the EU would be that ASEAN is much more politically driven while the EU is more economically driven.There is still a wide gap in the economic condition among the ASEAN members, which would make it difficult for the association to use the European single market as a model. Furthermore, to impose a single currency policy would not be feasible at the moment.
Meanwhile, the ASEAN Secretary-General Le Luong Minh said that ASEAN ministries in the last meeting had agreed and endorsed the deliverable and the post 2015 agenda. He believed that ASEAN could make the single market timely and made their own countries proud.
The ASEAN single market is expected to facilitate the free flow of goods and services in which the tariff among member countries could be reduced 0 to 5 per cent.
The single market will be fully implemented in 2015 in ASEAN-6 (Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines) and in 2018 for Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam, making it a bloc with 600 million population and $2.2 trillion in GDP.
The Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) should "not copy the EU common market concept," a senior envoy of the European Union (EU) has urged the bloc, saying that the single market to be implemented by ASEAN should be based on the economic levels of the association’s members. EU Ambassador to Indonesia, Brunei Darussalam and ASEAN Julian Wilson said on April 18 that the EU had proved that a single market could bring economic advantages to its members, but it also made mistakes. “I don’t like the idea of saying that ASEAN can learn from what we have done...
The Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) should “not copy the EU common market concept,” a senior envoy of the European Union (EU) has urged the bloc, saying that the single market to be implemented by ASEAN should be based on the economic levels of the association’s members.
EU Ambassador to Indonesia, Brunei Darussalam and ASEAN Julian Wilson said on April 18 that the EU had proved that a single market could bring economic advantages to its members, but it also made mistakes.
“I don’t like the idea of saying that ASEAN can learn from what we have done because in fact we made some mistakes. ASEAN can learn from our mistakes as well as learn from our success,” he told reporters on the sideline of EU-ASEAN Economic and Policy Forum.
The forum discussed the assumption that the main difference between ASEAN and the EU would be that ASEAN is much more politically driven while the EU is more economically driven.There is still a wide gap in the economic condition among the ASEAN members, which would make it difficult for the association to use the European single market as a model. Furthermore, to impose a single currency policy would not be feasible at the moment.
Meanwhile, the ASEAN Secretary-General Le Luong Minh said that ASEAN ministries in the last meeting had agreed and endorsed the deliverable and the post 2015 agenda. He believed that ASEAN could make the single market timely and made their own countries proud.
The ASEAN single market is expected to facilitate the free flow of goods and services in which the tariff among member countries could be reduced 0 to 5 per cent.
The single market will be fully implemented in 2015 in ASEAN-6 (Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines) and in 2018 for Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam, making it a bloc with 600 million population and $2.2 trillion in GDP.
