ASEAN is ASEAN, not European Union Ratih Indraswari The proponents of Euro-centric in Southeast Asia have been long

comparing ASEANs process of integration to those of European Union. The economic union and shared identity were heralded as breaking-ground achievements, and in return were adopted as benchmarks to measure the ASEAN integration process. However, their attempt to apply the European Union recipe into ASEAN has intentionally depicted the bleak future of the most promising regional bloc in the Southeast Asia. We should stop looking west and try to understand the process of ASEANisation from within. Comparing these two distinct geographic footprints is not only counterproductive but also leads to misleading conclusions. Mainly because both ASEAN and European Union have distinguished constitutive factors that are contradicting in their conception and practice. The European Union is mostly referred as a grouping of Western European countries -before the first East Enlargement - which were deliberately displaying an intention to forge cooperation. Meanwhile, political, economic, and social outlook of ASEAN member states are unlike the European Union. There is no certain religion that applicable to all ASEAN member states. Unlike European Union with its Christianity, the most reffered religion in Southeast Asia, Buddhism gained most of its followers in Thailand and Indochina states, while Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia are constituted by majority of Muslim population. Moreover, ASEAN is the home of multiethnic and multicultural societies. With Malaya ethnicity spread across Malaysia and Brunei, Thai in Thailand, Khmer makes up the entire population of Cambodia. Add to it, Chinese society dispersed all over the region with Singapore as its biggest hub. The European Union was established to encourage economic cooperation under the European Coal and Steel Community. Overtime, it spills over to political cooperation. Meanwhile, ASEAN was prompted by political consideration of Cold War rivalry and the spread of communism. And only recently seeks to deepen its economic cooperation through the establishment of an ASEAN Economic Community. Politically, ASEAN is a mixing bowl. Communism vs non-communism used to be the dividing line amongst states in the Southeast Asia region. Nowadays, it has moved to those who embed democracy like Indonesia and the Philippines, to a dictatorship of Myanmars Military Junta. Some states are still exercising their communist believe such as Laos and Vietnam, this is at odd to that of European Union and its imperatives on democracy through acquis communautaire. The European Union is highly institutionalized with rather rigid characters. Yet, ASEAN is lack of compliance mechanism due to its preference toward the primacy of national sovereignty. The former has evolved into a supranational entity, while the latter remains as organization of sovereign states. Making the effort to compare these two opposite institutional platforms has discriminated ASEAN (Richard Higgot).

Therefore, it is futile contrasting this already different form of regionalism. Subsequently, it implies that skeptic arguments toward ASEAN integration process by merely looking at European Union are rather weak, if not delusional. ASEAN is ASEAN, and European Union is not ASEAN. The process of ASEANisation should be driven from within. It is only natural for us as ASEAN citizens to decide our own model of integration and choose our own way to attain it, not others. However, we can look for good examples from the European Union that will fit the nature of ASEAN states. Just as stated by the previous ASEAN Secretary General, Ong Keng Yong We are not looking to take the EU model lock stock and barrel. We simply cannot. The very nature of ASEAN as an intergovernmental organization differs from that of the EU. However, we are looking for good ideas and best practices, and the European Union certainly has plenty of these. (Berlin 2007 ASEAN Secretariat)