The European Union's interregional policy at the Asia-Europe meeting (ASEM)

During 1996 the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) was created with the purpose of constituting a mechanism of nonexistent interregional dialogue until that moment and that united the both extremes of the eurasian territorial mass: East Asia (represented by group ANSEA 3) and Europe (represented by the European Union). The expectations erected at the moment of ASEM's creation were many, but with the years it has demonstrated a set of limits that has diminished its effectiveness, at least in the area of the political dialogue. In this paper is described the particular experience of the diplomacy of the European Union in the mechanism of the ASEM, the kind of interregional policy that this one has implemented and the contradictions that it has had to tolerate with respect to his own legal and institutional exigencies. In the paper it is argued that, despite its limits, the ASEM can be a referential case on the reaction of the European Union forehead to the transformation that in historical terms means the political and economic emergency of Asia in the international system.