The project Competing Regional Integrations in Southeast Asia (CRISEA) brings together Southeast Asian (SEA) and European researchers with 3 objectives. 1. Research. Our previous research shows that SEA is open to multiple forces that drive regional integration through competition for resources and legitimacy. In the current crisis of legitimacy for globalisation, SEA's competing regional integrations present challenges for its people and for ASEAN's framework-building project. We analyse these in sectorally-themed work packages on 'arenas of competition': the environment, the economy, the State, the identity of SEA's people, and the Region. Using an interdisciplinary micro-macro method of analysis, we ask in each case how ASEAN-led regional integration is – and is seen by SEA's people as – part of the problem or part of the solution. CRISEA engages with the work programme's concern with "what ‘region’ means to the peoples of these countries within and beyond the ASEAN context". Closely aligned with the 2015 Joint Communication on EU-ASEAN relations, it enhances the EU's understanding of "the Asia-Pacific as a strategic region for Europe". 2. Policy relevance. CRISEA's research programme was developed for its relevance to EU policy on ASEAN and its member states. Its dissemination strategy innovates by creating mechanisms for dialogue with a targeted audience of policy makers, stakeholders and the public in Brussels and SEA, using briefing sessions, workshops, press coverage, film, public lectures and policy briefs. 3. Networking and capacity building for the European Research Area. Leveraging existing networks of EU-SEA cooperation – the unique EFEO network of 10 field centres in SEA, the IDEAS and SEATIDE projects, EUROSEAS, ASEF – we reinforce the ERA through coordinated academic exchange, joint research and results delivery. Our consortium engages western European and ASEAN scholars with emerging expertise in southern and eastern Europe.

Challenges to EU foreign and security policy have been mounting in recent years. The dwindling global engagement of the US and the growing assertiveness of Russia and China hamper the ability of the EU and its member states to shape multilateral rules and compel them to rethink their role along new patterns of multipolar interactions. The collapse or severe weakening of state authority in the EU’s neighbourhood create interconnected challenges extending into policy areas outside the remit of foreign and security policy, thus augmenting the need for an integrated response. Meanwhile, the emergence of nationalist forces often espousing Eurosceptic views complicates efforts to reach intra-EU consensus on international security matters. The interplay between these factors is most evident in the EU’s difficulty in addressing crises and conflicts. JOINT, a project involving 14 partners from 12 countries, will analyse how intra-EU contestation, regional fragmentation and multipolar competition affect the capacity of the EU to set foreign and security policy objectives and generate and integrate diplomatic, military, economic and other sectorial capabilities to handle conflicts, crises and relations with external players. It will devise assessment criteria for effective foreign and security policy governance structures involving EU institutions and member states, encompassing multiple policy areas and unfolding in different formats of engagement of external players. It will survey public perceptions to inform an assessment of the political acceptability of an enhanced EU foreign, security and defence policy. And it will promote mutual learning between researchers and policymakers through the secondment of scholars to the foreign ministries of France, Germany and Italy, as well as the EEAS. JOINT will advance our knowledge of how EU foreign and security policy can become more joined-up and sustainable in an increasingly complex and contested world.