Archive:EU-ASEAN cooperation - introduction to key statistics

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Data extracted in March and April 2017. Most recent data: Further Eurostat information, Database.

Data extracted in March and April 2017.

No update planned for this article.

Highlights

Figure 1: 40 Years of EU-ASEAN Cooperation — Key statistics

This article is an introduction to the online version of Eurostat’s publication 40 Years of EU–ASEAN Cooperation — Key statistics (also downloadable as a PDF). It provides a selection of statistics on the European Union (EU) and its Member States in comparison with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its Member States. This online publication aims to give an insight into a range of socioeconomic issues concerning EU–ASEAN relations.

Full article

EU–ASEAN dialogue relations

The European Economic Community (EEC) — later renamed the European Community and incorporated into the European Union (EU) — and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) established formal relations in 1977 through the 10th ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting; these relations were institutionalised with the signing of the ASEAN–EEC Cooperation Agreement in March 1980. In 1977 there were nine Members States of the EEC and five Member States of ASEAN, whereas 40 years later the combined membership of these two regional organisations has grown to 38 (see Table 1 for a timeline of the expansion of the EU and ASEAN).

Table 1: Timeline of EU and ASEAN enlargement
Source: Eurostat and ASEAN secretariat

The EU and ASEAN have a dynamic partnership in a number of areas, from political dialogue, cooperation in non-traditional security areas, trade and investment relations, connectivity, to cooperation in community building among ASEAN Member States. ASEAN–EU relations are guided by the Nuremberg Declaration on an EU–ASEAN Enhanced Partnership, adopted in March 2007. The Declaration sets out a long-term vision and commitment for both sides to work together. At the ASEAN–EU Ministerial Meeting held in Brunei in 2012, the EU and ASEAN adopted the Bandar Seri Begawan Plan of Action to Strengthen the ASEAN-EU Enhanced Partnership (2013–2017), a wide-ranging document aimed at guiding and bringing to a higher level the cooperation between the two regions. In 2015 a Joint High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/European Commission Communication on EU–ASEAN relations and their further strengthening was adopted. The document, The EU and ASEAN: a Partnership with a Strategic Purpose, was subsequently endorsed by the EU Foreign Affairs Council which issued conclusions on EU–ASEAN relations on 22 June 2015. The latest ASEAN–EU Ministerial Meeting (Bangkok, October 2016) confirmed the positive momentum in EU–ASEAN relations and the shared objective of taking them to a higher level in the future, with the possible establishment of a Strategic Partnership between the two regions.

High quality statistics and capacity-building

The ASEAN–EU Dialogue Relations rely on good quality statistics to analyse the current situation and identify the most appropriate policies to progress towards common goals.

The need to address current global challenges is generating a growing demand for good quality statistics. Therefore, both European and ASEAN partners are very active — on national, regional and international levels — in promoting the relevance and comparability of statistics.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is a particular example of such a challenge and statisticians have played an important role in the definition of the indicators that will monitor the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Ensuring good quality statistics is a common priority for all producers of official statistics, and it is therefore essential to work on improving and strengthening statistical capacity in all countries. The need to address current global challenges puts additional pressure on national statistical systems.

In the EU context, the European Statistics Code of Practice (ESCoP) is the quality framework on which the production of European statistics is based. The principles of the Code set the standards with which the institutional environment of statistical authorities have to comply and on the basis of which statistical processes are implemented and statistical outputs produced; hence, they promote the highest quality of statistical information for the users of European statistics.

The ASEAN partners are committed to complying with the 2012 Code of Practice for the ASEAN Community Statistical System, which has been inspired by the ESCoP, and is consistent with the United Nations (UN) Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics. The principles and good practice indicators of the Code cover all aspects of the development, production, dissemination and communication of ASEAN statistics.

Capacity building for producing the SDG indicators based on sound methodology and corresponding to the required quality levels will be a focus of cooperation in statistics. By working together to improve the quality of official statistics, it will be possible to meet user needs for the policy of sustainable development.

Publication structure and coverage

40 Years of EU–ASEAN Cooperation — Key statistics provides users of official statistics with a snapshot of the information that is available for the EU and ASEAN on Eurostat’s website, the ASEAN secretariat’s website and the websites of other international organisations. The publication provides indicators for a selection of topics; it is composed of an introduction as well as five articles which provide information on different socioeconomic issues.

The publication aims to present information for the EU and ASEAN, including:

the EU-28 and the 28 EU Member States;
ASEAN and the 10 Member States of ASEAN.

Spatial data coverage

The geographical aggregates such as EU-28 and ASEAN include information for all of the Member States of these two organisations or estimates for missing information; any incomplete totals, shares or ratios that are created are systematically footnoted. Time series for these geographical aggregates are based on a fixed set of Member States for the whole of the time period (unless otherwise indicated). For example, any time series for the EU-28 refers to a sum or an average for all 28 current EU Member States regardless of when they joined the EU.

The order of the EU-28 Member States used in this publication follows the alphabetical order of their names in their national languages, whereas for the ASEAN Member States the order follows their names in English. In many of the figures the data are ranked according to the values of a particular indicator. Where possible, data for the EU-28 and the EU Member States are shown in blue and those for ASEAN and the ASEAN Member States are shown in red.

If data for a reference period are not available for a particular EU Member State or ASEAN Member State or an aggregate, then efforts have been made to fill tables and figures with data for previous reference years (these exceptions are footnoted); generally this involved taking account of at least the two previous reference periods and exceptionally older data. In the event that data for a particular aggregate (EU-28 or ASEAN) are not available the aggregate has not been included in the tables and figures; in the event that data are not available for a particular EU Member State or ASEAN Member State then this Member State has not been included in the figures and this has been noted below the figure.

Source data for tables and graphs

Introduction: tables and figures

Data sources

The indicators presented are often compiled according to international — sometimes global — standards, for example, United Nations standards for national accounts and the International Monetary Fund’s standards for balance of payments statistics. Although most data are based on international concepts and definitions there may be certain discrepancies in the methods used to compile the data.

Almost all of the indicators presented for the EU and its Member States have been drawn from Eurobase, Eurostat’s online database. In exceptional cases some indicators for the EU have been extracted from international sources, for example, when values are expressed in purchasing power parities (PPPs) (based on United States dollars (USD)).

For ASEAN and its Member States, the data presented in this publication have generally been extracted from the online data provided by the statistics pages of the ASEAN website or a range of international sources.

For many of the indicators, multiple international statistical sources are available, each with their own policies and practices concerning data management (for example, concerning data validation, the correction of errors, the estimation of missing data, and the frequency of updating). In general, attempts have been made to use only one source for each indicator in order to provide a comparable analysis between the EU Member States or between the ASEAN Member States.

The international data sources used in this publication are shown in Table 2.

Table 2: International data sources
Source: Eurostat

Aggregates

Data for the EU-28 or ASEAN have been compiled based on each aggregate’s current composition, regardless of the time period presented. For example, data for ASEAN are always based on the 10 current Member States, even if historical reference periods are presented, for example, data from 40 years ago (1977).

Data extraction and processing

The statistical data presented in this publication were extracted during March and April 2017 and the accompanying text was drafted in April and May 2017. Eurobase, ASEAN’s statistics and international sources are regularly updated, frequently in some cases, so there may be differences between the data presented in this publication and any data that are subsequently downloaded.

Many of the international sources from which data were extracted present monetary data in national currencies and/or United States dollars (USD), whereas Eurostat data are normally presented in national currencies and/or euro (EUR). Monetary data for ASEAN Member States have been converted into euro using current exchange rates. Data that are expressed in USD having been converted from national currencies using purchasing power parities have been left in dollar-based purchasing power standards. Equally, time series for indicators expressed in constant prices have not been converted from the original currency (whether for national currencies or in USD).

Several indicators have been standardised by expressing their values relative to an appropriate measure of the size of a Member State, for example, in relation to the total population or the size of the economy (as measured by the gross domestic product (GDP)). Whenever possible, these size measures have been extracted from the same source as the indicator itself; otherwise these data have been extracted from the World Bank’s databases.

Data presentation

Many of the data sources contain metadata that provide information on the status of particular values or data series. In order to improve readability, only the most significant information has been included as footnotes under the tables and figures. Where appropriate, breaks in series are indicated in the footnotes provided under each table and figure. The following symbols are used in tables where relevant:

Italic data value is forecasted, provisional or estimated and is likely to change;
: not available, confidential or unreliable value.

A billion is used to indicate a thousand million. A trillion is used to indicate a thousand billion.