ASEAN leaders committed in the Charter to create a single market and manufacturing base with effective trade and investment facilitation, where there is free movement of goods, services and investment. They also promised to secure a freer movement of capital. The central role played by international organizations in international law has aroused considerable interest and comments from experts. Their emergence after the Second World War placed a heavy burden on them for the maintenance of international peace and security, as well as for other diverse development functions. International organizations have enormous powers, which are usually conferred on them by member States through treaties. Member States shall grant this power to pursue a common objective, but shall also retain the right to exercise that power. In practice, it is not possible to say to what extent such competences can be exercised by international organizations and, as such, the act of “transfer” or “transfer” of competences from States to international organizations sometimes threatens the competence of individual States to act as they deem necessary. This complex and delicate relationship between member States and international organizations is highlighted in order to determine whether the relationship is purely interim and who exercises effective control over the other. There is no doubt that, in exercising the powers conferred on them by States, international organizations carry out legislative activities that impose certain obligations on the State, thus raising the question of compliance and modalities of implementation.
“ASEAN, as an intergovernmental organization, has legal personality,” the Charter states. Over the past decade, public-private partnerships between States and a wide range of non-State actors have proliferated as vehicles for functional cooperation at the global level. At the same time, there is a tendency to grant such partnerships the privileges and immunities normally reserved for intergovernmental organizations (“IO-type privileges and immunities”). After identifying the legal and normative issues associated with this trend, this article argues that IO-type privileges and immunities should be limited to entities clearly established and governed by international law, and that any approach to IO-type privileges and immunities as a unified whole, regardless of the precise functional requirements of the global public and private sector. Partnership and its different categories of staff or specific conditions in the respective national jurisdiction where a particular privilege or immunity is sought should be avoided. This article examines how ASEAN acquires its international legal personality and exercises its treaty capacity. It first traces the evolution of ASEAN`s international legal personality and treaty practice during three consecutive periods in ASEAN`s development prior to the Charter from 1967 to 2007. Subsequently, consideration will be given to formally granting ASEAN legal personality in 2007; analyses the content and implications of the 2011 Rules of Procedure for the conclusion of international agreements by ASEAN; and reviews ASEAN practice after the adoption of Charter-based treaties. He argues that ASEAN already had limited international legal personality and treaty capacity before the adoption of the ASEAN Charter in 2007. While the Charter represents a turning point in ASEAN`s legal development, ASEAN`s exercise of its international legal personality and treaty-making capacity has remained limited since then due to numerous institutional and procedural constraints.
In order to be better prepared for challenges, ASEAN needs a legal basis and institutional framework to build regional integration, the Charter said. This article links the different explanatory power of classical theories of integration – neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism – in different regional contexts to the dynamics of normative argumentation. To this end, it proposes a model of regional integration inspired by the theories of communicative action and the English school.