After voters in France and the Netherlands rejected the proposed European Union Constitution, the bloc no doubt plunged into a deep crisis, but it is a crisis that will lead to "a period of reflection and a stronger European Union at the end," a Brussels-based think tank expert told a recent symposium in Tokyo.
"We've had many crises before," Fraser Cameron, director of studies at the European Policy Center in Brussels, said. He stressed how Europe over the past five decades has achieved what many scholars and experts doubted would ever be achieved, including market integration and a single currency.
Still, it will take at least two to three years before the EU can revive the troubled constitution treaty, Cameron told the Sept. 6 symposium at Keidanren Kaikan, organized by Keizai Koho Center under the theme, "The EU -- the New Superpower?"