Nations hope ASEM Summit will help bind them closer together

LONDON - The 8th Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) Summit, to be held in Brussels, Belgium, on Monday and Tuesday, is the first of the biennial gatherings since the Lisbon Treaty came into force in December 2009.

The treaty aims to create greater coherence among the member states, and thus enable the European Union (EU) to have more global influence. However, some analysts in the United Kingdom think it is still very hard for EU members to achieve consensus on dealings with China.

"Member states have widely different interests, and the creation of consensus between them is very hard. Sometimes one thinks that the EU will never translate its immense commercial importance into political influence," Kerry Brown, a senior fellow on Asia at the London-based Royal Institute of International Affairs, told China Daily.