ASEAN’s 10 member countries agreed to and enforced a charter which will set political, economic and social benchmarks, for the diverse region. Moving closer to forging an European Union-style community, the constitution of this charter sets out rules of membership, trade, investment, the environment, transforms ASEAN into a legal entity and envisages a single free trade area by 2015 for the region of some 500 million people. Until now ASEAN nations have been forming bilateral trade relations amongst themselves and neighboring countries in order to support each other.

“This is a momentous development when the ASEAN is consolidating, integrating and transforming itself into a community,” Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono told the AFP after the charter came into force on Monday, adding that the implementation of the charter “is achieved while the ASEAN seeks a more vigorous role in Asian and global affairs.”

Although the charter tries to regulate the region which was bitterly divided and war-torn in the 1960s and 1970s, many international policy experts question the efficiency of the charter. Since its incorporation more than 40 years ago ASEAN has been little more than a talk shop in Asia, forging agreements through consensus and steering away from confrontation. Asian policy experts are now interested to see what ASEAN members will archive.