Multilateralism Revisited: Current State and Future Prospects of SAARC-EU Relations

Thirty years after the establishment of SAARC, the organisation’s member states face the challenge of how to deepen its impact both internally and externally. So far, the organisation’s principles for intra-regional cooperation are based on “sovereign equality, territorial integrity, political independence [and] non-interference in the internal affairs of other States”. While economic prosperity and political cooperation play a pivotal role internally, three out of seven objectives in the SAARC Charter deal with external relations. On an external level, SAARC aims at strengthening cooperation with “international and regional organisations with similar aims”. Of the latter, the European Union (EU) is an eminent partner for SAARC. The paper highlights the actual SAARC-EU relations, explores possible terrain for their future development, and discusses to what extent experience drawn from the EU integration process could serve as a helpful tool in order to carefully match SAARC’s needs in its own process of regional integration.