The paper investigated the difference the EU made to the nature and speed of convergence process in the countries that joined the EU since 2004 relative to countries that converged outside such closely-knit supranational organization. It draws some lessons from this analysis for ASEAN countries....

The EU has evolved from a grouping of six Western European countries with stated economic objectives to a large regional organization of now 27 European countries pursuing a wide range of political, economic, social, environmental, and security objectives, while the majority of the other...

The EEC has so far had a greater economic than political impact, while the reverse is true of ASEAN. However, in the case of the relations between the two groupings, economic considerations, while important and possibly mutually advantageous, were merely a derivative of political motivations....