Timor-Leste is on track for its long-awaited accession to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Malaysian Foreign Minister Mohamad Hasan said yesterday, adding that it could join the bloc as soon as October if it fulfills the remaining legal requirements.
Addressing a press conference in Kuala Lumpur, Mohamad said that Dili “has made meaningful progress in implementing a roadmap” for its accession, Channel News Asia reported. He spoke after a meeting in which foreign ministers from ASEAN’s 10 member states voiced “strong support for Timor-Leste’s full membership in ASEAN, particularly in its efforts to fulfill the remaining criteria” of membership.
If things go well – Timor-Leste still needs to institute 66 out of the 84 required legal instruments, most of them related to ASEAN’s economic pillar – its accession could take place in October, when Malaysia will host the 47th ASEAN Summit and several other related meetings. ASEAN agreed to admit Timor-Leste’s membership “in principle” at its summit in late 2022.
ASEAN member states will “now begin undertaking their respective domestic legal procedure to finalize Timor-Leste’s accession process by the 47th ASEAN Summit and Related Summits in October, hopefully,” Mohamad said.
The announcement came a day ahead of today’s 46th ASEAN Summit, which is likely to be dominated by the Myanmar conflict and prevailing economic uncertainties linked to the U.S. tariffs. ASEAN leaders are expected to further deliberate on Timor-Leste’s membership bid during the Summit, the bloc’s Secretary General Kao Kim Hourn said yesterday, according to the Malaysian state news agency Bernama.
During this week’s ASEAN-related meetings, the prime ministers of Malaysia and Laos expressed their support for Timor-Leste’s accession, as did the government of the Philippines, despite a dispute involving a former Filipino congressman who fled to Timor-Leste after orchestrating the killings of nine people in Negros Oriental in 2023.
If Timor-Leste’s membership is approved – and the large number of unfilled requirements would seem to suggest that the timeline could drag well beyond this year – it would mark the end of a long journey for the young nation, which has aspired to membership in the regional bloc since winning its independence in 2002.
It is no surprise that Timor-Leste wants in. More than two decades after independence, the nation is beset by poverty levels that bear comparison with the poorest nations in Asia. According to the United Nations, 42 percent of the population currently lives below the national poverty line and the country is currently beset by high levels of unemployment and rudimentary infrastructure. While ASEAN membership would be no panacea, greater integration with its Southeast Asian neighbors would likely create opportunities for Timor-Leste to develop and diversify its oil-dependent economy.
This also touches on the very reason why Timor-Leste’s membership bid has been delayed for so long. Since Dili first applied for membership in 2011, some ASEAN states have expressed concerns that the admission of Timor-Leste could widen the already considerable economic divide between the bloc’s 10 member states. Singapore was prominent among the skeptics, arguing in 2013 that it was “not yet ready to absorb the many challenges and complexities of ASEAN membership.”
As Grace Stanhope wrote recently for the Lowy Institute’s Interpreter blog, welcoming Timor-Leste as ASEAN’s 11th member will only widen “the gap between ASEAN’s richest and poorest members” – something that would not be trivial for the bloc. The bloc’s wide economic divide has been a perennial issue for ASEAN since the admission of Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia in the second half of the 1990s, and considerable institutional attention has been directed toward ways to close the gap between these nations – often referred to as CLMV for short – and their wealthier counterparts.
If granted membership, Timor-Leste’s $2 billion economy would be by far the smallest in ASEAN, lagging far behind the economy of Laos, which at $15.8 billion currently occupies that position. Similarly, the nation’s GDP per capita was just $1,648 in 2023, according to World Bank data, the lowest in Southeast Asia aside from conflict-torn Myanmar, and far short even of mid-table member states such as Vietnam ($4,346) and Indonesia ($4,940). As Stanhope noted, it would add another member to the CLMV, right at the moment that Vietnam appears ready to graduate from the grouping of least-developed ASEAN member states.
What immediate impact this would have on ASEAN is hard to say with certainty. Unlike the European Union, ASEAN does not transfer large amounts of resources from wealthy to poor members of the bloc, although some funding is allocated for institutional capacity building in less wealthy member states. The biggest impact would probably be felt in the realm of decision-making, where added diversity could further complicate ASEAN’s ability to reach consensus on key regional and global issues.
