Shaping a Common Future for Europe and Asia – Innovation and Best Practices in Addressing Common Challenges

Donor: European Union and Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development

Project details: 

The overall objective to which this project contributed to was the formulation of relevant sustainable development policies for framing of a comprehensive and constructive partnership between Asia and the EU. There are numerous areas of common interest for EU and Asian policy makers but effective responses to preserve or establish sustainable development in these are hampered by a series of interrelated and trans-regional problems to policy making that need to be overcome. These include few institutions with an independent mandate, local presence and the appropriate policy expertise to make relevant and comprehensive policy recommendations; under-utilised research by policy makers; a considerable shortage of comparative research between Europe and Asia aiming at identifying best practices in both regions; a lack of strategic alliance between EU and Asian research communities; and a lack of appropriate joint dialogue forums for researchers and policy makers from both regions. Consequently, the project’s purpose was to strengthen, deepen and share the knowledge and understanding of selected common sustainable development challenges across the EU and Asia, therefore increasing the relevance of the policies formulated in the two regions to tackle these issues. The project was undertaken to promote and disseminate knowledge and awareness of what Asia and European Member States, or respectively the EU, are doing in their regions to confront the challenges of climate change, demographic and social changes, and emerging security challenges of globalisation, thus encouraging dialogue and exchange on policy and academic level between the two regions.

The project’s results were fourfold:

• Increased understanding of the regional and global challenges of climate change and sustainable development, emerging security challenges and the need for social cohesion to tackle these challenges;
• Platform established for exchange between policy makers and the research community;
• Strengthened cooperation between different communities to share experiences and work together to address these challenges;
• Innovative policy recommendations formulated for those challenges.

Target groups: Policy makers and researchers in Europe and Asia.

The project was implemented in cooperation with the East Asia Institute (EAI), the European Policy Centre (EPC) and the European Union Centre Singapore (EUC).

Activities:

• Elaboration of 71 comprehensive reports, case studies, comparative studies, papers and recommendations for policy dialogues;
• 7 workshops for researchers and policy makers;
• 17 political roundtables, policy dialogues, policy panels, political role-out events and political forum;
• 7 papers and book publications;
• 8 conferences;
• 33 decentralised briefings for policy makers, academics and the wider public;
• 6 Brussels EU-Asia policy briefings;
• Establishment of an online platform.