Regional Integration: Tailoring One’s Institutional and Legal Architecture

In the absence of effective international response, the regional level represents an interesting solution, as gathering countries that may share a common history, face similar issues, aim to the same objective(s) and the like. With that in mind, this chapter examines how the EU and ASEAN institutional and legal architectures have been set up and further developed with the purpose of responding to shared issues, including terrorism, and how they have taken into account their own specificities while doing so. This chapter is based on the premise that engaging in a regional integration process is not a natural project in itself. The establishment of interdependent and binding relations between States is an endeavour which challenges their place on the international landscape, their sovereignty and autonomy in relation to other States. By developing their own regional ‘constitutional’ architectures, the EU and ASEAN members have developed their capabilities to interact within their own region. Member States may need to have a minimum level of trust in each other in order to develop a regional architecture that would link them together; but such a regional framework may also constitute the basis for developing further mutual trust when providing the guidelines of their common action(s) and the limits of what they may do. Both regional organisations tailor their respective institutional and legal architecture based on their own background, perspectives and limitations in order to reach a coherent regional response against terrorism.