The seminar, titled "Enhancing Asian Institutions: ASEAN’s Role for Regional Integration," attracted policymakers and economists to discuss how Asia could increase the effectiveness of its institutions to promote regionalism.

Panel participants, including ADB Vice-President Xiaoyu Zhao, said that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) can and should play a pivotal role in helping the region reap the rewards of closer cooperation in economic, environmental and social arenas.

"ASEAN is the most established regional organization present today in Asia and it is well placed to be a hub of closer cooperation inthe future as it provides an insight into how Asian regionalism might develop more broadly," said Mr. Zhao.

An enhanced ASEAN could also help Asia to speak with a strong, single voice when it deals with governments and organizations outside the region and could strengthen the effectiveness of other regional fora such as the East Asia Summit, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and the ASEAN+3, which groups ASEAN with the People’s Republic of China, Japan and the Republic of Korea.

“The global economic crisis has created a major window of opportunity for strengthening regional economic institutions,” said panel participant Andrew MacIntyre, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Crawford School at the Australian National University. “ASEAN has a chance to drive the reform process, because all of the very big states want to keep ASEAN on their side. But if ASEAN fails to lead, others in the region will not wait.”

Asian integration has improved in the last 10 years with the establishment of new regional groups such as ASEAN+3 and agreement on common goals. The 10-member ASEAN is committed to creating an ASEAN Economic Community by 2015. Overall though, Asia lags other parts of the world in developing regional institutions with the muscle to make regional cooperation effective and sustainable.

Europe, by contrast, cooperates closely in economic and security policy as well as in justice and home affairs. The European Union (EU) has the European Commission, which monitors the behavior of its members, the European Court of Justice, a parliament that oversees the EU budget and the European Central Bank that directs monetary policy in countries using the euro currency. Common rules and institutions to back them have generated huge economic gains for Europe and sharply narrowed the income gap between EU member countries.

The seminar also featured presentations by Rodolfo Severino Jr., Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, and former Secretary General of ASEAN; and Hadi Soesastro, former Executive Director of Center for Strategic and International Studies, Jakarta. The event was moderated by Endy Bayuni, Editor of the Jakarta Post.