For his welcoming remarks, Mr. Christian Echle , Head of Asia-Pacific at KAS Berlin, briefly summarised the “State of Southeast Asia in 2024” (ISEAS) and pointed to one of the main findings that the EU’s visibility in the region is slightly decreasing.

Having first served as a French ambassador, and later as EU ambassador to the Pacific, Sujiro Seam has become the Union’s representative to ASEAN in September last year. Ambassador Seam explained his work and provided some background on EU-ASEAN relations and pointed to ways forward in the relationships between the two blocs. One interesting point raised was that in 2022 EU and ASEAN leaders celebrated 45 years of dialogue in a commemorative summit in Brussels, promising more elaborate and intensive cooperation between the groups. The EU Delegation to ASEAN intends to focus on shared EU and ASEAN aspirations to increase engagement at the highest level and consolidate the EU’s status as a strategic partner that delivers on its commitments across the three ASEAN pillars of political and security, economic, and socio-cultural issues. Ambassador Seam was kind enough to take time to answer questions from the Young Fellows on the current state of EU-ASEAN Affairs, the topic of diversification of supply chains and the role of Southeast Asia as well as humanitarian aspects.

In the remaining time, the EANGAGE alumni met in an internal session to discuss current projects and to share some updates amongst each other. The e-seminar was organised and moderated by Mr. Moritz Fink , Policy Officer and Deputy Head of Office from KAS PDA.

KAS PDA thanks its young fellows and in particular Ambassador Seam for his time and insightful remarks.

Background:
In collaboration with the Asian Vision Institute (AVI), Cambodia and the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam (DAV) the Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation Singapore Political Dialogue Asia the EU funded project “The Next Generation EU-ASEAN Think Tank Dialogue” (EANGAGE), that brought together 68 young, talented research fellows from the EU and ASEAN since 2021.

The project lasted two years and its goal was to encourage greater collaborative research between the EU and ASEAN, inspire joint research and foster greater awareness of the EU’s engagement in the ASEAN region.