The document discusses the East Asia Summit (EAS) and its role in the development of an East Asian community. It notes that the EAS was established as a forum to promote peace, stability, and economic prosperity in East Asia. There has been discussion about whether the EAS or ASEAN Plus Three would play a bigger role in leading the process of developing an East Asian community. Some see the EAS as a secondary or outer level of cooperation beyond ASEAN Plus Three. The shape and form of a future East Asian Community remains to be defined through the ongoing discussions within organizations like the EAS.

1. The Ministers welcomed the convening of the East
Asia Summit as a forum for dialogue on broad
strategic, political and economic issues of common
interest with the aim of promoting peace, stability
and economic prosperity in East Asia. In this
respect, they recognized that the East Asia Summit
could make a significant contribution to the
achievement of the long-term goal of establishing an
East Asian community.It appeared that over time
following the first EAS the focus was less on
whether the EAS has a role in community building
than on what the role was and whether it was
secondary to ASEAN Plus Three. By mid-2006 the
Chinese news site Xinhua Net suggested the
community would arise through a two-phase process
with ASEAN Plus. Three as the first phase and the
EAS as the second phaseThe China-India joint
declaration of 21 November 2006 linked, at
paragraph 43, the EAS with the East Asian
Community processThe concentric circle model of
the community process with ASEAN at the centre,
ASEAN Plus Three at the next band and the East
Asia Summit at the outer band is supported by the
Second Joint Statement on East Asia Cooperation
Building on the Foundations of ASEAN Plus Three
Cooperation

2. The shape of the East Asia Community remains something to
be defined in the future. The issues being explored at this
stage deal with whether there will be a Community which
must be resolved prior to understanding what it will look
like.[23]
Some have linked the EAS with a future broader Asian
Economic Community like the European
Community.[24]
However, some commentators see this an
overly optimistic vision[25]
and it is plainly in the very distant
future if it is to occur - the European Community has taken
decades to reach its current shape, had greater early drive
for its creation and more coherence between its members
(ASEAN alone is composed of democracies, dictatorships,
capitalist tax havens and communist states).
On any view community building is not a short-term project.
However, after the second EAS the Indian Prime Minister Dr.
Manmohan Singh was confident that the EAS would lead to
an East Asia Community.[26]
China had also apparently
accepted this was the case.[27]
If achieved the Comprehensive Economic Partnership for
East Asia (CEPEA) would be a tangible first step in the
community building process. The Second EAS and Third
EASseems to have increased confidence in CEPEA but is
still only a proposal.[28]
For the moment currency union, as distinct from the Asian
Development Bank proposed Asian Currency Unit, is not
even being pursued within ASEAN, much less the broader
members of the EAS.[29]