Plenary Discussion: ASEAN Integration through Law

Universitas Pelita Harapan Faculty of Law in cooperation with the National University of Singapore held the ?ASEAN Integration through Law? that discussed the newest findings on law field especially concerning the ASEAN community. The seminar that was held on July 29^th 2013 was the second part of the discussion with the same topic where the first part had been done at Singapore on July 4^th 2013.

The focus of this seminar highlighted three main points. First is about the legal principles and the definite regulations on ASEAN. The second focus is about the legal principles procedures and regulations that oversee the institutional structure and the decision making process. And the last focus is about the implementation, enforcement and dispute settlement.

To discuss the highlighted focuses and the newest issues about ASEAN Community that is going to be established soon in 2015, many speakers and renowned law expert, both domestically and internationally, are invited as the speakers. Some of the internationally renowned speakers in this seminar are Prof Walter Moon, Former Singapore Attorney-General; Prof Pieter Jan Kuijper, Former Director of the WTO Legal Affairs Division; Prof. Robert Beckman, CIL Director and noted South China Sea Expert and Jean Claude Piris, Former Director-General of the European General Service. Speakers from Indonesia that also attended the seminar are the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Marty Natalegwa, who presented a short speech about his thoughts on ASEAN integration through law, and Indonesia Ambassador for ASEAN, I Gede Ngurah Swajaya, who involved in several plenary discussions in this seminar.

Professor Joseph H.H Weiler, as the Porject Director, opened the seminar with a short speech. After the opening speech, the plenary discussion took place where the discussants highlighted the issues that are currently happening in the ASEAN community, the role of ASEAN in the international world and the proposal of model trading for the countries in the ASEAN community.

At the end of the seminar, John Riady, Executive Dean of Universitas Pelita Harapan Faculty of Law, closed the seminar with his opinions towards law integration in ASEAN. He expressed that this seminar is very crucial in making the framework to move ASEAN to the next level. John also said some of the discussions that he agreed on where sense of community cannot be legalized since this concept belong to people-to-people, but, infrastructure is still needed in the community to prevent disharmony, contradiction and anything that could hinder the progress of ASEAN community. (lau)

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