Basic Analysis of Economic Integration in East Asia & Legal Harmonization

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The purpose of research is to explore the relationship between economic integration and legal harmonization in EU, NAFTA, MERCOSUR, ASEAN and the possible way to achieve the legal harmonization in the East Asia.The finding of research is that an economic harmonization does not necessarily cause a legal harmonization. The EU oriented an economic integration through legal harmonization from the beginning of setting up the community and obliges the high degree of legal harmonization even on new member states as a prerequisite of EU accession. MERCOSUR also aims at legal harmonization but in the reality it is not achieved at all. NAFTA and ASEAN do not use legal harmonization to realize an economic integration.This means that economic integration does not necessarily need institutional harmonization. But economic integration boosts not only trade volume but also direct investments in the integrated market. To encourage direct investments, it is necessary to develop the economic law system as an infrastructure of integrated market. In Asia, legal technical assistances are provided to achieve this goal by international organizations like World Bank, ADB, UNDP, ODA organizations of donor countries. As a result of competition of legal assistances between donor organizations, patchwork of different legal systems in a recipient country is appearing. This causes a difficulty of understanding the national laws not only by foreigners but also by the nationals. We have to examine the effect of legal patchwork towards economic integration.