High-level Ministerial meetings in both Asia and Europe in recent weeks have highlighted a resumption of such consultations within the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) process since the Hanoi Summit meeting in October 2004 with some apparent display of the new desire to carve out areas of activity and intensify others.

The meetings were part of the regular ministerial process between summits and building up to the 10th anniversary summit in Helsinki in 2006.

The discussions also sought to address the ASEM tradition of uncertainty and confusion as to whether the process was purely one of informal dialogue as sought by some or a springboard for cooperation.

Some of the meetings pushed the ASEM process into new directions to guide the Summit discussions and process and to prepare to deal with future disruptive crises and events such as the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the Tsunami disaster of 2004-5.

The Finance Ministers deputies meeting was also held in Xi’an April 22 to prepare the Ministerial in Tianjin.

The Foreign Ministers gathering May 7-8 in Kyoto covered the litany of global issues ranging from UN reform and millennium goals, to weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and the Middle East, as well as Global Warming and regional issues such the trial of Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the situation in Myanmar.

The Ministers continued the discussions launched previously, including at the Hanoi summit, on the future of the ASEM process but did not publicly convey agreement on such issues as a secretariat offered to he hosted by the Philippines. They did, however, agree to launch cooperation on a number of new areas such as oceans, between prosecutors, local initiatives with a global environmental impact, vocational education and training and a network of diplomatic academies.

And apparently continuing years of effort by civil society and trade union organisations for such a decision, they “welcomed” a proposal to hold a ministerial meeting on labour and employment matters.

An annex also issued to the Chair Statement covered the discussion on the future of ASEM which indicated it concentrated on the three areas of substantive cooperation, improving the efficiency of ASEM mechanisms and its possible enlargement.

On issues of substantive cooperation, they agreed to concentrate on three broad areas reflecting the three main foreign policy, economic and cultural pillars of ASEM and that the cooperation should have specific goals and be result oriented. The priority areas were determined as strengthening multilateralism and security issues, sustainable development including environment and energy security and the dialogue between cultures and civilisations.

At the Foreign Ministers meeting in Kyoto, Asian participants who turned out in force, with the lone exception of the Singapore Minister, once again complained that only seven European colleagues out of 25 were on hand for the session, taken as yet another in a recent examples of the lack of interest in Asia and the ASEM process.

The EU Troika including the Presidency of the Council and the Commissioner for External Relations also held a number of bilateral sessions with specific ASEM partners, including with Burma/Myanmar, which continued to generate considerable controversy and attention because of the widespread European and other discontent with the delay in establishing an open and democratic process in the country.

The controversy over Burma/Myanmar had in fact resulted in a cancellation of the previous meetings of ASEM Finance and Economics Ministers in 2004.

Finance Ministers met in Tianjin June 26 and 27 following the suspension of a previously-scheduled session in the Netherlands in 2004 largely due to the EU policy at that time of refusing to meet with representatives of the Myanmar Government, which also resulted in a postponement of an ASEM Economics Ministers meeting as well.

The session in Tianjin heard an address by Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao who spoke strongly of the opportunities of closer Asia-Europe cooperation and coordination in financial and economic policy, relations and projects, but also addressed at length the long-running discussion over China’s currency exchange policy. Although the EU had, along with the US’s more persistent political pressure, urged a possible review and reduction of the Yuan exchange rate, Wen reminded that such policies and decisions were a matter for the country involved. The message seemed to have the public support of a number of European participants, some of whom had previously agreed that Chinese exchange rate reduction alone would be insufficient to deal with US and other international trade deficits and other issues.

Wen and the participants also addressed other areas of possible ASEM financial and economic cooperation and integration. These included mutual support for enhancement of an Asian bond market and an increase in the international role of the European common currency, the €uro.

The meeting also adopted the text of the Tianjin Initiative on closer economic and financial cooperation that contained proposals for possible action by the Summit leaders to consider. Such a development had been foreshadowed by a decision at the 2002 Copenhagen ASEM Summit which initiated an independent academic study on such cooperation. The eventual recommendations were greeted with some debate and lack of support and largely set aside by the postponement of the Finance and Economics Ministers meetings in 2004 but verbally endorsed by the Hanoi Summit.

One of the elements of the Tianjin Declaration was the decision to close one example of ASEM cooperation initiated in 1998 at the London Summit in the aftermath of the 1997-98 Asian financial and economic crisis to establish an ASEM Trust Fund operated by the World Bank to dispense technical and other assistance to Asian members adversely affected by the crisis. In Tianjin they decided to terminate the fund, which had dispensed some 82 million €uro in grants for projects, at the end of 2006. And it was agreed to study the operation and details of the fund, which operated in a low-key fashion and sometimes criticised, for lessons for future cooperation.

The Tianjin Declaration praised the fund and other examples of such cooperation for capacity-building and charged Ministers and governments to conduct seminars and discuss other areas of possible “demand-driven” cooperation in view of changed conditions in part resulting from globalisation. Two such seminars were set for London and China in 2005 and 2006 on debt management and accounting standards. The Ministers also generally supported the independent Task Force report on closer cooperation and called for further examination of its recommendations, especially its calls for an ASEM bond market and fund.

They also agreed that in view of the financial crisis of the 1990s and others such as the Tsunami crisis of 2004-5, ASEM should establish an ASEM Contingency Dialogue Mechanism for Emergent Economic and Financial Events to consult, coordinate or anticipate such crisis situations. A special task force, coordinated by China, Japan, Laos, Austria and the EU Commission should further explore the Tianjin Initiative and consider the next steps.

Ministers of Culture from the ASEM countries along with officials from UNESCO held a second Europe-Asia dialogue on cultural diversity in Paris June 7 and 8 and pledged to continue to promote “unity in diversity” between the two continents. They promised to put in place a 15-point action plan that would encourage circulation of performances and exhibitions between Asian and European countries and to facilitate co-productions and cooperation between theatres, art centres, museums and publishers. Projects involving sustainable cultural tourism were also discussed as was the UNESCO convention on cultural diversity which should be concluded in October.

In another non-negligeable element, the French host remarked that cultural-related employment represented 2.5% of the total employment in the EU 25 countries. One of the workshops at the meeting was focused on culture as a vehicle for development. He also underlined that such dialogue helped control and humanise the process of globalisation.

The so-called third pillar of ASEM was boosted at the Copenhagen summit in 2002 as means of fostering understanding and raising awareness to counter the concept of a “clash of civilisations.” A first Ministerial meeting was held in Beijing in October 2003. A seminar on cultural diversity co-organised by Vietnam and Belgium was also held and the second Ministerial meeting as well as numerous other exchanges have sought to clearly establish the cultural dimension as an integral part of ASEM which also involves the participation of civil society and professionals. Malaysia agreed to host the next meeting in 2007.

An address by UNESCO Director General Koichiro Maatsura concentrated on the work of the organisation to negotiate a convention on cultural diversity.