Externalizing the EU’s Justice and Home Affairs to Southeast Asia: Prospects and Limitations

Abstract:

The transnational security dimension ascribed to many phenomena such as terrorism, drug trafficking, pandemics, or people smuggling has led to increased pressures to increase cooperation across national borders to ‘fight’ or ‘manage’ many of the new, transnational security threats. Against this background the EU has sought to promote its own norms and ideas, policy preferences and its own model of regional cooperation and integration in her external affairs.

A number of recent studies have examined the growing potency of the EU to actively promote ideas and policy preferences in its neighborhood as well as with the U.S., however, scant attention has been given to EU cooperation with other regional organizations. By closely examining the EU’s cooperation with ASEAN in two policy fields deemed central within JHA – human trafficking and counter terrorism – this article seeks not only to broaden the empirical basis of respective scholarship, but additionally seeks to connect the empirical findings with the wider debate on the EU’s ability to externalize its internal security governance.

The study finds that despite numerous declarations and plan of actions, very little policy transfer has actually taken place between the EU and ASEAN. It argues that any attempt to externalize or transfer policy is met by long-standing ideas and norms, policy paradigms and an established specific modus operandi of regional cooperation within ASEAN itself. This will continue to make nigh impossible any externalization of EU JHA policies to Southeast Asia for the foreseeable future.