The debt crisis may be the turning point for the European Union, EU Fellow Anne Burrill said Tuesday during a public lecture. However, that turning point may slowly result in the strengthening of the union.

“Everybody says we’ve got a crisis,” Burrill said. “We do have a crisis, but apparently the origin of the word crisis is the turning point in a disease. The turning point might be the patient dies. But hopefully, it’s not turning in that direction.”

Burrill, who is a visiting Fellow at the University of Washington, said the EU was originally created after World War II in an effort to ensure stability, peace and prosperity.

However, as more countries applied for membership into the union, laws and economic policies had to be compromised in order to ensure the countries remain mutually interdependent on one another, she said.

In the 1950s, when the economy was largely based on steel and coal, there was little national division, Burrill said. But in the 1980s, countries that had recently been dictatorships applied for membership, increasing the divisions between the countries.

“The original policy said the community shall aim at reducing the disparities between the levels of development of the various regions,” Burill said.

The introduction of the Euro in 1999 was, therefore, more than an economic project, she said. It is a fundamental part of the larger political process to integrate Europe and encourage stability. Burrill said the Euro allows people to work in any country within the Euro zone, encouraging a free market.

“The union’s capacity to absorb new members, while maintaining the momentum of European integration, is also an important consideration in the general interest of both the union and the candidate countries,” she said.

However, she said, each country still has its own economic policy despite the ties created by the use of the Euro.

And now, important leaders in Europe are calling on more integration of the Euro, she said. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the Euro zone must work harder to converge their fiscal policies, she said.

“No one wants to see the patient die, so the option is to strengthen the union,” Burrill said.

Douglas Epperson, the dean of the College of Liberal Arts, questioned Burrill’s view that the European debt crisis can be solved through a slow process.

“The Economist portrays a sanguine picture that the future of the Euro suggests there really isn’t time for those kinds of long drawn-out processes, and that very concerted and very bold action is required in the state of the Euro,” Epperson said.

Updates to the treaty between the countries are required, Burrill said. But that is a long and arduous process.

Claire Carden, a senior linguistics and international studies major, said the lecture was helpful for her own studies, especially Burrill’s discussion of the history of the enlargement process and the work occurring between countries.

“I thought it was really interesting,” Carden said. “I really appreciated her optimistic outlook.”