As the leaders signed off on the pledge, free trade across much of Southeast Asia was marking its first 100 days. Implemented on Jan. 1, the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) is off to a promising start, although it has also won its fair share of critics in recent months.

AFTA's initial target was to eliminate import duties by this year on almost all products among ASEAN's six original members -- Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Brunei and Singapore. The bloc's newer members -- Cambodia, Laos, Burma and Vietnam -- will sign on in 2015, when the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) will formally arrive with a market of 600 million people and a combined GDP of $1.5 trillion.

To date, about 99 percent of tariffs have been removed, with exemptions awarded to rice, tobacco and alcohol, along with scores of other sensitive items. Customs procedures are being harmonized and common standards applied.

The World Bank recently said the priority for middle-income countries such as Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia was to move up the value chain in the manufacturing sector. "New policies are required to escape from the crowded middle of industrial development and break into knowledge and skill-intensive sectors," the bank said in its twice-yearly update on the region.

In light of slower growth rates in the West, the World Bank also urged developing countries in East Asia to deepen regional economic ties in order to boost trade, reduce costs and increase international competitiveness. To a large extent, at least among the six original ASEAN members, this is now underway.

Government ministers charting AFTA's course have long argued that it would attract investors to the ASEAN region, while also benefiting consumers as competition forced producers to deliver lower prices, thereby providing a significant boost to intra-ASEAN trade. 

The cost of almost 2,000 items -- ranging from foodstuffs and T-shirts to appliances and cars -- fell dramatically when most taxes were removed 100 days ago. In Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, advances in information technology and lower transport costs are expected to enable companies to diversify and strengthen their supply chains at cheaper rates.

Component and parts manufacturers are now coordinating across the region, evolving into a single market for televisions, computers and household appliances that could prove capable of competing more efficiently against Chinese producers. Regional transport, as an industry, is also growing sharply.

Illustrating some of the shifts taking place, Thailand and Vietnam are experiencing an expansion in packaging industries at the expense of the Philippines. As one packaging chief put it, "It is far more cost-effective to concentrate production in one or two centers, change the label languages and ship products to regional markets, than it is to manage production in six or seven factories scattered across Asia, particularly with a zero tariff rate."

Analysts expect international issues such as education, medical research and climate change to be governed increasingly from a trade perspective as well.

Cross-border trade among ASEAN countries had accounted for a mere 20 percent of overall exports and imports. In establishing AFTA, the authorities are understandably anxious to see improved living standards ahead of the final push toward a fuller economic community in 2015. Such a community would limit the impact of sharp currency fluctuations at home and abroad, particular against the dollar and yuan. The hope is that this would help avoid any repeat of the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis, which took Thailand many years to recover from.

But the path of regional economic integration in Southeast Asia still holds its dangers, as evidenced by the European model that has in many ways informed it. Throughout the EU's rapid expansion and introduction of a unified currency in parts of the bloc, European economic conservatives warned about the dangers of incorporating countries with less-disciplined attitudes toward fiscal management. More than a decade later, the EU has been forced to provide guarantees to ease Greece's debt crisis. Additionally, economic policies in Spain, Italy, Ireland and even the U.K. have hardly instilled confidence, raising doubts about the union's durability.

Analysts said Europe's errors are worth noting from a Southeast Asian perspective, wherepolitical protocol keeps members from intervening in the internal affairs of their neighbors. It is an issue that has dogged ASEAN -- particularly in times of turmoil, such as the 2003 anti-Thai riots in Cambodia and the 2007 anti-government protests in Burma -- since it was founded in 1967, leaving the organization with the reputation of a paper tiger. "That is something that nobody here, in Thailand or anywhere else in ASEAN, wants to talk about," said one banking analyst who declined to be named.

That was at least in part addressed in Hanoi, where ASEAN announced that it has agreed to implement existing pacts and deal with "transnational challenges" ahead of 2015. By all accounts, AFTA has steered Southeast Asia into a brighter economic future, and at a fortunate time, given the patchy global recovery.

But like Europe, Southeast Asia is hardly free of economic Achilles' heels, as illustrated by the donor-dependent mentality of Cambodia and the sheer paranoia of the ruling junta in Burma.

If episodes such as the current Greek tragedy being played out in Brussels are to be avoided here, then ASEAN countries might eventually need to breech protocol and take a more active interest in the fiscal affairs of their neighbors. In a region where economic barriers are quicker to fall than political ones, that is far from a certainty.