earticle

영어

The co-existence of regionalism and multilateralism is one of the distinguishing characteristics of the recent world economic environment. The recent surge of regional integration attempts in the Asia-Pacific, North America, and Asia etc. appeared, prima facie, to undermine the multilateral integration process of the world economy under the GATT/WTO system. This fear remains valid, despite the rather favorable assessments made by both the OECD (1995) and the WTO (1995). This paper aims at testing the consistency of the newly launched Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) with the WTO system. The main conclusion of the paper is that the conceptual framework of ASEM and its achievements so far were in full consistency with the currently operating multilateral trading system. In addition, this paper argues that ASEM, through its nature as an inter-regional cooperation body, has good chances to become a facilitator of further multilateral integration process of the world economy.