Page 20 - EU_ASEN Relations: Perspectives From Malaysia

ASEAN, 2016). Thus, the trade relationship between ASEAN and EU continue

to look promising. The EU-ASEAN Business Council Business Sentiment
Survey 2015 found that European businesses have a positive outlook for their

operations in the region and view ASEAN as a bright spot for future investment
and development of their businesses (EU-ASEAN Business Council 2015).

Some 70 per cent of respondents predicted an increase in profits in ASEAN

and 80 per cent expect that trade and investment within the region to increase
over the next five years (UNCTAD & ASEAN, 2016).

Apart from the flow of capital, the flow or mobility of labour is also often a
subject of regional cooperation. In the European Union, the right to unfettered

movement of people is a fundamental part of regional integration and the
policy for labour mobility has not changed much since 1957, when it was

enshrined in the Treaty Establishing the European Community (Rubrico,

2015). However, it was only recently that ASEAN announces that the “free
movement” of skilled labour was going to be one of the pillars of its economic

integration and ambition to form a single market by 2015 (Rubrico, 2015). In
future, to encourage enhanced people-to-people connectivity and to facilitate

the flow of labour across ASEAN and the EU, the EU-ASEAN ministerial

meeting, as a dialogue and policy cooperation forum could consider a holistic
approach to the free mobility of labour. Besides labour mobility, other topics

such as academic/student exchanges, rights of migrants, as well as control and
border management are discussed together (Jurje & Lavenex, 2016).

Concluding remarks

The bipolar security competition between the Soviet Union and the United
States during the Cold War era has been replaced by the economics-driven

tripolar global competition amongst Asia, Europe, and North America in the

post-Cold War period. In order to strengthen a “weak link” in this triadic inter-

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