We are all in the same European boat; wherever it leaks, we all get wet The game that matters is to design a Europe in which we feel safe

Try Nato first, says the Union to East and Central Europeans at its door. No, we won't have you, says a Nato man

IT IS, perhaps, Low's most famous cartoon. He drew it in the 1930s, in the depth of Depression, and it shows two top-hatted businessmen adrift on a raging sea. One is saying to the other: "Phew, that's a nasty leak! Glad it's not at our end of the boat!"

That capacity to see and yet not to understand is still around in Europe. Outside the gates of Nato and the doors of the European Union, a crowd of applicants is gathering. There are something like 11 of them, all except Malta and Cyprus from East and Central Europe: Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the three Baltic republics, Slovenia and Bulgaria.

Most were allowed to attend last week's EU summit at Cannes. But that only meant that the applicants sat by themselves until the heads of government had finished, the doors were unlocked and the cars were driving off. Then these lesser presidents and prime ministers were obliged to scramble to find out what, if anything, had been said about them.

The applicants want to join Nato and the EU because, first of all, they will not feel safe until they do. Trade and prosperity matter, but come second. The applicants think that Europe is entering stormy waters. They also believe, with utter conviction, that we are all in that European boat together. If it leaks in Latvia, we are all in as much danger as if it leaks in Portugal - or Paris. But they are discovering that these days, nearly six years after the 1989 revolutions, something is going wrong with the West's eyesight, or with its brain. Yes, the East Europeans are told in Brussels by the Nato guardians or by the European Union statesmen, the leak might get nasty but there isn't much we can do about it ... and after all, it's at your end.

I have been spending a week at a conference on European "enlargement" organised by the 21st Century Trust in a small Alsatian castle. There are young men and women from a dozen nations here. Many of them, and many of the guest speakers, come from the would-be entrant nations. But everyone, almost without exception, arrived quite certain that the rapid admission of East and Central Europe into the Union alliance was something necessary, obvious and good. They are leaving much more confused and subdued. They have learnt that the Union is growing increasingly evasive about their entry, while Nato is beginning to argue that there is no sensible reason why they should join at all. As an ex-prime minister of Poland said bitterly, "We had our five minutes, but it's over".

There is something to be said for this attack of nerves. Enlargement, it is now plain, means transformation. For a long time, the Brussels 12 could not grasp this. Enlargement used to mean simply that the community union grew bigger but did not change. As the poem said, "Whatever Miss B eats turns into Miss B". Earlier entrants, such as Greece, Spain, Portugal, even Britain in its time, had joined an institution that already existed. The post-Communist nations would presumably do the same. The first warning that things might be more complicated was provided by German unification. At first it seemed that West Germany had swallowed East Germany and that the outcome was merely a fatter Federal Republic. But within a year that republic was under immense strain. So far Germany's constitutional architecture has survived the stress, but in many other ways it is no longer the same country. Job expectations, the relationship between business and government, the reverence for balanced budgets and the dread of state spending, have all changed. There were xenophobic outbursts, and even doubts about Germany's need for a united Europe.

To become a 26-nation body, from today's 15 which only yesterday was 12, will turn enlargement into transformation. The acquis communautaire - the total legislation of the Community and Union - has been held to be inviolate, something that every entrant must accept, like the Vatican's "Deposit of Faith" or Communism's socialist achievements.

But that must change, because systems like the Common Agricultural Policy would break down if they were applied unamended to East-Central Europe. They are the result of ancient bargains, but these bargains can no longer bind a union with more than 20 members. The very constitution of the EU has to change. If decisions are to be made by 26 partners, then there will be more majority voting and the votes will probably be weighted more heavily to favour countries with big populations and balance out the small members.

Speakers at my conference warned that membership of the EU might be nearly 10 years off, even for the Czechs and Poles. Why not try Nato instead, which in theory offers much quicker membership and demands fewer painful adjustments? But then came the Nato speakers. They confided that Nato would be fatally devalued if it took new members now. The security guarantee was too costly and too dangerous to existing members to be shared widely: "A Rolls-Royce guarantee for everyone is not affordable". And the great object, they added, was not to offend Russia. Taking Poland, especially, into Nato would offend Russia dreadfully.

So, instead, why not stay outside Nato? Why not huddle against the walls, while those safely inside "projected security" over those outside? But nobody could explain how this projecting was actually done, or what it meant. An Estonian among us was told that he was unfortunately not protectable, and that his tiny nation's best safety was reconciliation with Russia. "Too costly to protect?" he mused. "I think we do not survive yet another occupation. So maybe we pay the cost. How much, please?"

A Nato visitor told his increasingly baffled audience that after all they should be going for European Union membership first. "It offers far greater guarantee against political reversal," he wheedled. Perhaps the West didn't want the East Europeans at all but hoped that, after trailing back and forth between the Nato gate and the Union door, they would grow tired and go away. But they will not.

Later in the week, on a hot summer day, the young Europeans played the parts of diplomats and politicians and simulated the negotiating of a pact between Russia and the European Union. I watched them conferring in the shade, sending envoys with deceitful messages, deciding to yield or to threaten rupture. When Prague was occupied by Soviet tanks, they were tiny children; when Solidarity was crushed by martial law, some of them were still learning to read. But the obstinate hope which grows in that zone of Europe still has the same flavour.

Of course it is unrealistic to think that Western nations will defend you just because you say: "I am European. Look, I embrace Western values like the free market and demo- cracy!" As a German newspaper grumbled the other day, "East-Central Europe is the zone of geopolitical egoism, where they still do not realise that they have to show people in the Nato countries why they should die for Przemysl or Danzig". It is true. The work of persuading us in Western Europe that we are all in the same boat has scarcely began.

Russia today is not so much a threat as a darkness, out of which almost anything could suddenly emerge. That is why it is the ultimate mug's game to try to design a world in which Russia might feel safe. There is simply too little to go on, apart from our own sneaking instinct to appease the unknown. The game that matters, in contrast, is to design a world in which we - the Europeans - feel safe, and in which the fear of Russia dwindles to a historical memory.

This means harassing our leaders to pull East-Central Europe and the Baltic republics into the European Union and Nato. The moment is anything but perfect. But tomorrow the chances will be worse. The leak is still small, but the nature of leaks is to grow bigger.