Strategies for the ARF

EU and ARF, including specificities of the CFSP

As regards participants, in July 1996 ARF adopted the following criteria for participation:

• Commitment. All new participants must subscribe to the key goals of ARF and work co-operatively to help achieve them. All ASEAN members are automatically ARF participants.
• Relevance. A state should be admitted only if it can be shown that it has an impact on the peace and security of the "geographic footprint" of key ARF activities (i.e. Northeast and Southeast Asia and Oceania).
• Gradual expansion. To ensure the effectiveness of ARF, efforts are made to control the number of participants to a manageable level.
• Consultations. All applications for participation should be submitted to the ARF chairman, who will consult all the other ARF participants and ascertain whether a consensus exists for admitting the applicant. Actual decisions on participation would be approved by the ASEAN ministers.

The EU is ASEAN's oldest dialogue partner. Informal relations started already in 1972, and the formal EC-ASEAN cooperation agreement was signed in 1980. Thus, EU was nearly a "natural member" of the ARF. So far, I have to admit that the EU has not been as active a partner as could have been expected. This has however more to do with the way in which the EU addresses foreign policy and security matters than anything else: It is the European Union that is a member of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). The EU is represented in the forum by the troika. Let us for a moment dwell upon the policy making in the field of Common Foreign and Security Policy, or CFSP as we say in European Jargon, and specifically the role that the European Commission can play.

The Commission has the following tasks in external relations under the Treaty on the European Union (TEU):

1. The Council and Commission ensure consistency of EU external activities as a whole
2. The Commission is fully associated with CFSP (2nd pillar)
3. The Presidency, the High Representative for CFSP and the Commissionrepresent the European Union internationally on CFSP matters.

The specificities of our decision-making process and troika representation explain thus why the EU often turns up with several participants. Discussions are currently ongoing on how, in the future, we could be represented in the ARF without having all three-four ministerial level representatives present - and still be able to make a forceful input. EU participation on military and defence issues has yet to take off. With the creation of the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) we hope to be able to have a pan-European representation in, e.g. the defence officials' meetings. We do have strong assets in the non-military instruments of conflict prevention and crisis management and a tradition and a culture of dialogue and of conflict prevention. A new attempt to strengthen EU participation in the ARF has recently been launched. All interested parties in the EU have made valid suggestions in this respect (strengthening dialogue with ARF partners to promote progress, hosting meetings, etc.) We are building up general support for strengthened EU participation in ARF and agreement on some mechanisms to achieve this, first and foremost to be able of having the EU co-chairing the ISG or ISM as an ASEAN dialogue partner in a coming year.