The US-sparked financial crisis has been expanding worldwide, and stock prices and exchange rates continue to fluctuate violently. It is of great significance that Asia and Europe have pledged to strengthen their cooperation to avoid a further chain reaction as a result of the crisis.

The Asia-Europe Meeting, attended by leaders of 45 Asian and European countries and international organisations, including Japan, China and South Korea, ended a two-day summit meeting in Beijing on Saturday, adopting a chairman’s statement and a special financial statement.

The economic scale of the ASEM meeting’s participant countries spans about half the world. At a time when the crisis has been deepening, it is the first such large-scale summit meeting to take place.

The ASEM special financial statement stressed that the International Monetary Fund should play a more important role in supporting countries in distress due to the crisis. It also indicated strong determination to overcome the crisis by coming up with ways to reform the regulation and governance of financial institutions.

The ASEM statements have been criticised as lacking substance. But it can be said that the ASEM meeting produced good results, considering the fact that the gathered leaders of countries and international organisations shared a sense of crisis and issued a strong message to the world.

The problem we should keep an especially close eye on is that the financial crisis has been spreading to emerging and small and midsize countries in Asia and Europe, some of which have experienced monetary instability.

In Europe, Hungary, Iceland and Ukraine are caught in a critical economic situation, and they have asked the IMF to grant urgent loans after their currencies collapsed.

In Asia, Pakistan—which is suffering an outflow of foreign currencies—also is asking the IMF for financial support. Meanwhile, in larger Asian economies such as India and South Korea, the sharp decline of their currencies also has spread anxiety.

The Asian currency crisis of about 10 years ago offers a bitter lesson. With the flight of foreign investment funds from Thailand, the Thai baht plunged, triggering the spread of the crisis to other Asian countries, including Indonesia and South Korea.

Some observers say there is a low possibility of a recurrence of an Asian currency crisis because these days, each Asian country has larger foreign currency reserves compared with a decade ago.

However, a little neglect may breed great mischief. The spread of the current financial crisis should be stopped by strengthening a safety net that will make it easier for countries on the brink of financial collapse to access IMF loans.

It also is an urgent task to prepare a framework to set up an emergency foreign exchange crisis fund between the group of Japan, China and South Korea and other Asian countries.

Japan, the United States and advanced economies in Europe need to strengthen their wide range of support for developing countries, including food aid.

A financial summit meeting is expected to be held in Washington on Nov. 15, to be attended by the Group of Eight major powers along with emerging economies. The summit meeting should be a venue to give an additional impetus to enhancing the Asia-Europe partnership and map out stronger and more concrete measures to address the current financial crisis.