SINGAPORE -- At the Ninth ASEAN Summit in Bali, Indonesia, this week, the 10 leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations signed the Bali Concord II, an action plan aimed at realizing a more integrated ASEAN in terms of economy, culture and security.
One of the key items of Bali Concord II, and probably its most important, is the ASEAN Economic Community, or AEC. Together with the ASEAN Security Community (but without the military accouterments of NATO in Europe) and the nebulous Social and Cultural Community, AEC should constitute the foundation of this new ASEAN vision, 27 years after the first Bali Concord was signed by the then-ASEAN 5 -- following the Vietnamese and communist victories across Indochina.
The AEC concept, first mooted by Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong last year, seeks to knit ASEAN into a more streamlined and integrated economic community, along the lines of the European Economic Community of the 1970s and 1980s.