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The ASEAN Eminent Persons Group (EPG) was a group of prominent citizens from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member countries, tasked to create the ASEAN Charter.[1] The group was formed on 12 December 2005 via the 11th ASEAN Summit Declaration in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
The mandate of the group was to examine and review ASEAN's structure, areas of cooperation, principles and goals contained in agreements, treaties and declarations over the previous 38 years, and to provide ASEAN leaders with policy guidelines on the drafting of the ASEAN Charter. The group was to consider an agenda including:
- Political and security (the ASEAN Security Community)
- Economic and finance (the ASEAN Economic Community)
- Functional (the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community)
- External relations, bilaterally and inter-regionally
- Narrowing the development gap among ASEAN member-states, in the context of the ASEAN Initiative for ASEAN Integration (IAI), and the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
- ASEAN structure, including decision-making process, administrative modalities, sources of funds, working methods, cross-sectoral coordination, conduct of meetings, documentation of meetings, roles of the Secretary-General and the ASEAN Secretariat
The group recommended key elements of an ASEAN Charter, including:
- Vision of ASEAN beyond 2020
- Nature, principles, and objectives of ASEAN
- Membership of ASEAN
- Areas for enhanced ASEAN cooperation and integration
- Narrowing the development gap among ASEAN member countries
- Organs of ASEAN and their functions and working methods
- ASEAN administrative structure (mechanisms, roles of the secretary-general and ASEAN Secretariat)
- Legal personality of ASEAN
- Conflict resolution mechanisms
- External relations
- ^ The ASEAN Charter (PDF). Jakarta: ASEAN Secretariat. Dec 2007. ISBN 978-979-3496-62-7. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-09-23. Retrieved 20 May 2015.