ASEM's rationale is today well-known. It was intended to fill a “missing link” between Europe and Asia. While trans-Pacific relations were being strengthened in the nineties with the development of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC), and transatlantic relations remained traditionally strong, institutional relations between Asia and Europe were still relatively under-developed. Asia-Europe relations were seen as the “weak link” in the context of the new emerging triad of North America, Western Europe and East Asia.

Launched in Bangkok in 1996 between the fifteen member countries of the EU, the European Commission, ASEAN members, China, Japan and South Korea, ASEM has created a new dynamic around a global agenda between the two regions. It has developed a new set of methods of fostering political and economic dialogue as well as intellectual and cultural exchanges. It is structured by a number of principles such as equality, mutual benefits and consensus. Its informality and multi-dimensionality are two of the key features. Moreover, states participate on an individual basis, which makes ASEM different from bloc-to-bloc dialogue such as EU-ASEAN.

Since its creation, ASEM has underlined a number of functions which help states manage their bilateral, inter-regional and multilateral affairs. It has raised the issue of the emergence of new forms of diplomacy between state actors and non-state actors (civil society, firms) as well as between national and regional actors. This new diplomacy adopts a more informal and multi-dimensional approach by involving both public and private sectors. In many ways, ASEM has created a new level of interaction in international relations, just below the universal level (UN for instance), and above the inter-regional level (EU-ASEAN) and regional level (EU).

ASEM is not a typical inter-governmental forum. The process that has emerged from ASEM has been characterized by the notion of trans-regionalism. In the absence of any authoritative definition 6, trans-regionalism is hereby defined as a soft-institutionalized process of consultation and co-operation between states from different regions of the world acting in their individual capacity.