00:00As ASEAN faces growing geopolitical pressures, questions emerge over whether its consensus-based decision-making can keep pace with today's
00:09realities.
00:10Speaking on the sidelines of the 39th Asia-Pacific Roundtable, Dr. Alfred Gershel, President of the Central European Institute of
00:17Asian Studies,
00:19says the bloc may need to rethink how it makes decisions in order to remain effective.
00:25I fully understand the importance, the ongoing significance of the ASEAN-Way principles, and non-interference is one of the
00:35key principles.
00:35Another one is consensus, and in order to overcome the non-interference principle, you need consensus.
00:42And right now, I don't see it among the 11 members.
00:45Certain member states, I do believe, would like to go more in the direction to weaken the non-interference principle,
00:55also the non-consens principle.
00:57But again, it's not all 11.
01:01So I understand the ASEAN dynamics and also the logic of ASEAN integration.
01:07However, there's a different logic, and that's the international system.
01:10There's right now, thanks to great power politics, the return of geopolitics, also geoeconomics, there's a strong pressure, not only
01:19on ASEAN,
01:19but also on other international institutions like the EU, to actually respond much quicker to the challenges that they faced
01:29than they had time in the past.
01:31So maybe 10 years ago, it was possible to actually discuss a certain topic for two, for three years, postpone
01:38the decisions.
01:39That's not possible anymore.
01:40And for this to overcome, I think the first step would be to actually really rethink the consensus principle.
01:49However, he said that ASEAN is not alone in facing these challenges, with the European Union facing similar woes as
01:57well.
01:58Gershaw believes a more flexible approach that allows for smaller groups of willing member states to move forward,
02:03without waiting for unanimous agreement, could help ASEAN respond more quickly.
02:09I wish I could say ASEAN should look at the European Union and just copy and paste the mechanism of
02:15the EU,
02:16but the EU faces really, really dissimilar problems.
02:19Very often, the decision-making process is way too slow.
02:24There are too many different national, even political party interests influencing the decision-making,
02:32external influences, of course, as well, because in foreign security policy,
02:37the EU also is based on consensus principles.
02:40So we have 27 members, and if one government says no, then the EU cannot move forward.
02:46So that's exactly also the issues that ASEAN faces.
02:51An idea that, at least on paper, is very sound is the so-called Team Europe approach,
02:57and this is close to the ASEAN minus X formula,
03:00which means you don't wait for all 27 or 11 member states to move on on a certain issue,
03:08but you find a group, a coalition of willing,
03:11so countries who are really committed to work closely together to resolve an issue,
03:17whereas the other countries, they stay out.
03:20That means they don't benefit from the results,
03:23but they also don't have a way to power.
03:25So this might really be the only way to go,
03:29because the other option, which is right now neither likely in Europe nor in Southeast Asia,
03:36would be a majority voting.
03:38And I think that, especially in light of the ASEAN way,
03:42that would take 10, 20, 30 years probably,
03:46that it is seriously discussed and adopted in this region.
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