The situation of the civil society organisations in the ASEAN countries

In 2023 the scope of the EU-Japan FuC activity has been extended to Southeast Asia. Following its extended remit, the EESC should identify EU key interests in the Southeast Asia region, including civil society organisations activity in this region. This will include also keeping an eye on the state of play of the ongoing trade negotiations with ASEAN countries, and searching to get an overview of civil society in the countries in the region.

ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, is a political and economic union of 10 states (Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam) in Southeast-Asia. It represents a population of almost 650 million inhabitants, and its territory is 4.5 million km^2..

The EU and the ASEAN countries have been ‘Dialogue Partners’ since 1977. The relation between the two sides has been since developing and in June 2015, the strategy “The EU and ASEAN: a partnership with a strategic purpose was adopted. In 2017 the second EU-ASEAN Plan of Action (2018-2022) was agreed upon and in the meantime, the the EU and ASEAN became ‘strategic partners’ in 2020. In 2022 the Plan of Action to Implement the ASEAN-EU Strategic Partnership (2023-2027) was published.

The main priorities for both the EU and ASEAN are among others climate change, security, technology, trade, migration. The importance of the region for the EU has increased significantly.

Southeast Asia's importance as a trading partner is also increasing, two ASEAN member states, Singapore and Vietnam have signed free trade agreements with the EU, and negotiations are under way with other four ASEAN countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Philippines). The EU’s ongoing work on bilateral trade agreements with ASEAN members would allow the establishment of a region-to-region FTA, which is the EU's ultimate ambition.

The objective of this Information Report is to investigate the situation of the CSOs of the region. Due to the fact that the trade and sustainable development chapter of all trade agreements have to be monitored by the DAGs of the given country, we have to be prepared for this job. We have two functioning DAGs from the ASEAN (Singapore, Vietnam) at the moment but we do not know the CSO organizations of the other countries at all.