Toohey, Lisa --- "When ‘Failure’ Indicates Success: Understanding Trade Disputes between ASEAN members" [2011] ELECD 469; in Buckley, P. Ross; Hu, Weixing Richard; Arner, W. Douglas (eds), "East Asian Economic Integration" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: East Asian Economic Integration

Editor(s): Buckley, P. Ross; Hu, Weixing Richard; Arner, W. Douglas

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849808682

Section: Chapter 7

Section Title: When ‘Failure’ Indicates Success: Understanding Trade Disputes between ASEAN members

Author(s): Toohey, Lisa

Number of pages: 33

Extract:

7. When `failure' indicates success:
understanding trade disputes
between ASEAN members
Lisa Toohey

In Southeast Asia, economic integration into global and regional trade
institutions has proceeded at a remarkable pace. Within just 15 years,
most of the states in the region have integrated into both the World Trade
Organization (WTO) and, at a regional level, AFTA, the Free Trade Area
of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). While these
arrangements are also supplemented by a web of bilateral and preferential
trade arrangements, the ASEAN members have chosen to keep ASEAN
as the centerpiece of their trading relationships. The ASEAN Economic
Community Blueprint, contained in the 2009­2015 Roadmap for an
ASEAN Community, sets out an ambitious program of economic integra-
tion that will see the creation of an integrated production base and a single
market by 2015.
From the perspective of a trade lawyer, one of the most interesting
aspects of ASEAN's development is the expansion of its dispute settle-
ment mechanisms. In 2004 the ASEAN Protocol on Enhanced Dispute
Settlement Mechanism (`the 2004 Protocol')1 was enacted to replace
a more basic instrument for the settlement of trade disputes, the 1996
Protocol on Dispute Settlement Mechanism (`the 1996 Protocol').2
The most recent Protocol to the ASEAN Charter on Dispute Settlement
Mechanisms (`the 2010 Protocol'),3 while of general application rather
than a replacement for the 2004 Protocol, is nonetheless considered


1 Adopted in Vientiane, Laos, on 29 November 2004, accessed 2 September

2010, http://www.aseansec. ...