The major characteristics between the EU and the AEC lays in the fact that the EU’s integration process focused on the pooling of sovereignty for common gains whereas ASEAN’s integration process focused on the principle of non-interference and the respect of national sovereignties of each member state. It is understood that with this, the EU’s experience was one of rules-based economic integration backed by hard laws, which in essence ensured the implementation and enforcement of such economic community through a decision-making institution, a monitoring institution, and a dispute settlement institution, the EU Council and Parliament, EU Commission, and the Court of Justice of the EU, respectively. It is not that ASEAN lacks the institutions required to monitor the achievement of economic integration, as an ASEAN Integration Monitoring Office has already been set up by ASEAN Finance Ministers in recent years. But the extent at which this office will be effective is still yet to be known. Instead, it is the institutional structures in general and the way they function that sets the AEC apart from the EU. To be more specific, with the EU adopting the supranational entity, it works under a legal framework in which all agreements in such economic integration is implemented and enforced by both the European executive and judiciary branches, the Commission and the Court of Justice, respectively