Timor-Leste and ASEAN
From candidate to next member state?
Roundtable discussion / Debate
Tuesday 28 February 2023 — from 1:30 pm to 3:30 pm
Faculty of Law of Thammasat University - Room 221 (2nd floor)
At the 40th and 41st ASEAN Summits in Phnom Penh in November 2022, the ASEAN leaders agreed in principle to admit Timor-Leste to be the 11th member of ASEAN. Although no date was given yet for the membership, the 2022 decision constituted by far the most significant move since 2011, when Timor-Leste landed its application to the regional organisation.
Since no other application was so carefully scrutinized by ASEAN Secretariat, academics as well as journalists have questioned, throughout the last 11 years, the motivation of Timor-Leste to join the grouping, the “readiness” of the latter, and the potential factors explaining the length of the process and the reluctance of ASEAN countries to let getting in the new member. However, unexpectedly, Cambodia has played a major role in 2022 when the country assumed the ASEAN presidency, while Timor-Leste is now relying on Indonesia, the ASEAN Chair in 2023, to see its application moving forward.
How to interpret this change in ASEAN organisation perception vis-à-vis Timor-Leste application ? What influence or change, if any, Timor-Leste membership would impulse to the regional grouping and to the current status of regional integration ? And more generally in the regional geopolitics marked by the USA-China rivalry and tensions in the South China Sea ?
Download the flyer and the programme.
With the participation of :
- H.E. Juvêncio de Jesus Martins (Ambassador of Timor-Leste to Thailand)
- General Boonsrang Niumpradit (Member of the Senate ; former Force Commander of the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor)
- H.E. Kasit Piromya (CPG Senior Research Fellow ; former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Thailand)
- Dr. Christine Cabasset (Associate researcher, IRASEC)
- Nadine Lobner (School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Lisbon)
Moderation by Dr. Duc Quang Ly (Project manager, CPG)
