The EU's existing 12 members have recently spent months haggling over the terms of admission for four countries -- Austria, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The detail has often been bewilderingly obscure, dealing with matters such as what sort of vehicles should drive up which Alpine roads, and whether a reindeer herdsman in the Arctic Circle deserves more financial support than a Mediterranean producer of olive oil.


One could argue that at least it is better for Europeans to be sitting around tables and boring each other to death than to be fighting wars. As Theodores Pangalos, the Greek Minister for European Affairs, sardonically described the EU's entry negotiations with Norway: "This is what it means to be Western and civilized: We spent six hours discussing 1,100 tons of cod."


But such an approach is shortsighted in the extreme. It conveys the impression that the EU is more interested in ironing out its own intricate internal problems than in grappling with the turbulent events rocking the world outside. Of these, the most important are the turmoil in the former Soviet Union, particularly the tensions between Russia and Ukraine, and the wars in former Yugoslavia. The EU has performed miserably on both fronts.


In the Yugoslav case, the EU had more than two years to draft a settlement and got nowhere. It is now the Americans and Russians who are setting the diplomatic pace. In the case of the former Soviet Union, it is unclear whether the EU has pursued any policy other than to allow a de facto resurgence of Russian influence in the region.


Many would draw the lesson that the EU is simply not mature enough in foreign policy terms to stand on its own feet. There is, however, something that the EU can do. It can recognize the urgent need to bind the former Communist countries of Central Europe -- the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia -- into the West's main economic and security institutions. Most Western European governments, and the executive European Commission in Brussels, say in public that the integration of the Central Europeans is an important objective. Then they go behind closed doors and talk about fish again.


Of course, the EU has various committees of experts who are trying to prepare the ground for the Central Europeans' entry into the Union. Teams of well-paid bureaucrats are working out the economic implications of the EU's expansion to the east. Most think that the Central European economies have some strengths, such as in agriculture, but are on the whole not yet developed enough to withstand the impact of free-market competition with the existing 12.


But if you are a Czech, Hungarian, Pole or Slovak, this is just not good enough. The rise of Russian nationalism, the calls in Moscow for a restored Soviet Union and the upheavals in the Balkans all make it seem insane for the EU to worry about whether cheap Polish strawberry exports will upset the internal EU market.


The Central Europeans understand that full economic integration into the EC cannot happen in the space of two or three years. But they do not understand why they cannot be included immediately in some EU structures, such as those for foreign policy and judicial affairs. They are right. One day the EU may come to regret its lack of vision on Central Europe.