The European Union and East Asia are major actors in global governance. However, the current global order is in discontent and the values on which it is based are challenged. The two regions are confronted with similar challenges like rising protectionism and a contestation of global values such as human rights, democracy, rule of law and sustainable development that both require regional and global problem-solving. However, mutual knowledge of the European and Asian perspectives on these global issues and how they should be dealt with is often lacking. The main goal of the summer school is to examine and compare how these major issues are being looked at and are addressed both in the EU and in Asia. In this regard, the goal of this summer school is threefold:

• First, it explores how global challenges have fostered regional responses and how perceptions of regional integration processes in the EU and East Asia have changed.

• Second, it discusses how global values are challenged and what the global governance implications are.

• Third, the summer school examines the responses from EU and Asia to these challenges in global governance institutions with a specific focus on their interactions in multilateral in order to deal with recurring global challenges.

More specifically, the first week of the Euro-Asia Summer School in Seoul introduces some of the key challenges related to the contestation of global values and focuses on how these challenges play out in Asia and which responses are being proposed to address these challenges. After an introduction to European and Asian regional integration processes, the second week of the Summer School in Leuven will focus on how the European Union is dealing with these challenges and global contestation of key international values. It will focus on the different instruments the EU is using to interact globally to preserve a global rules-based order.

The summer school constitutes furthermore a great learning process to prepare advanced students to analyse, understand, and influence when facing global realities. The summer school therefore targets both excellent European and Asian students who are willing to gain insights into the relationship between the European Union and the fastest emerging region in the world.