INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
Call for Papers

International Conference
Thursday March 27th – Friday March 28th 2008

CONTEMPORARY EUROPE RESEARCH CENTRE
Jean Monnet European Centre of Excellence
The University of Melbourne
Level 2, 234 Queensberry St, Carlton

Call for Papers

closes 1st February 2008

This major international conference will take place in Melbourne in March 2008 and will be examining the EU’s external relations and objectives with Asia-Pacific. It is widely acknowledged that the EU has actively pursued a more influential role in East Asia in recent years. This engagement is no longer exclusively economic, but also political, where it has begun to reflect the EU’s perceived role as a ‘norms exporter’ – particularly in the areas of human rights and democracy promotion. In aiming to contribute to the relatively new academic engagement with the EU’s international presence, EU-Asia Relations: A Critical Review will provide a greatly necessary critical assessment of the current state of the EU – Asia-Pacific engagement. To capitalise on the conclusions of the conference, a policy workshop in early July 2008 in Brussels is to follow.

The key themes to be addressed include:

• Europe’s view of Asia; do EU institutions and Member States define Asia as more than China? Which of the Member States have a real interest in Asia?
• Asia’s view of the EU; what are the attitudes of leading Asian countries towards the EU? Do they form views on internal EU developments, and do they regard the EU as anything more than a trading block?
• The EU as a normative actor; to what extent has the EU been successful in exporting its norms to Asia? How do Asian countries view and react to these attempts?
• The state of Asian integration; why has ASEAN not been more successful at achieving its goals and meetings its own deadlines? What prospects for the East Asia summit?
• The EU’s Asia Policy; is the dominance of China in the EU’s policy towards Asia justified? What are the implications for other Asian partners?
• The US and Asia; what is the nature of post-Iraq’s America engagement with Asia? Should the EU coordinate its policy towards Asia with the US?
• EU-Asian cooperation on global issues; are there prospects for effective cooperation – as opposed to paper declarations – on issues such as climate change, proliferation, terrorism and failed states?
• Academic assessment on EU and Asia; what is the track record of academic contributions to the study of EU-Asia relations in the past decade? Have the right issues been addressed? Have academics had any impact on the policy processes?

To this end, we invite contributions from a broad range of backgrounds. Papers proposals, with an abstract of up to 200 words, and a short biography, should be submitted to Philomena Murray at pbmurray@unimelb.edu.au by 1 February.

The conference will bring together a large number of interlocutors in a public forum for rigorous analysis, discussion and debate. Theorists, empirical researchers and practitioners based in Asia, Europe and the Pacific will engage with each other on the matter of the nature of EU influence in international affairs – with a particular emphasis on Asia and inter-regional relations. The result is a unique and valuable interdisciplinary dialogue and exchange of views.

Registration forms will be available by the end of January from www.cerc.unimelb.edu.au.

EU-Asia Relations: A Critical Review is run from the Contemporary Europe Research Centre (CERC) at the University of Melbourne, Australia and is funded by a grant from the European Union (Agreement number 2007 – 1747 / 001 - 001), with additional support from the University of Melbourne.

Conference Organisers

Assoc. Prof. Philomena MURRAY
Jean Monnet Chair
School of Political Science, Criminology and Sociology and
Director, Contemporary Europe Research Centre,
Email: pbmurray@unimelb.edu.au

Dr Fraser CAMERON
Senior Adviser
European Institute for Asian Studies
Brussels
Email: frasercameron@hotmail.com