ASEAN - position and linkage in international trade (with emphasis on the EU)

The principal objective of the work is to compare the integration process of ASEAN with EU, USA and Japan, with emphasis on the EU. This work is divided into four main parts and at first it starts with a general description of economic integration degrees. Then a description of historical evolution of ASEAN and EU is provided. The next part of this work is dedicated to the relationships between ASEAN and EU, USA and Japan. The final chapter of this thesis contains the comparison of each integration process of ASEAN with world economic leaders. The comparison is based on the statistics of total trade volume between 1985 and 2012 and it compares the integration process of EU and ASEAN with ASEAN and USA and Japan. This thesis also focuses on the EU clause about human rights and how this fact affected the integration process between EU and ASEAN. The results of this analysis show that the historically strong economic position of The United States and Japan in Southeast Asia has been partially eliminated by EU in the last few years