Until now, Italian, French, and British attitudes toward the European Union have been completely distinct and completely predictable.

The Italians have been unconditional, enthusiastic supporters of the integration process - the more the better. The French have revelled in their privileged position at the EU's heart, and have been determined to hang on to their privileges, starting with the benefits they derive from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The British, meanwhile, have always been classic reluctant member - always late, always unwillingly dragged along in the wake of the front-runners, but seldom offering alternative proposals. Today, however, these stereotypes are breaking down.

In Italy, the right-wing coalition government led by Silvio Berlusconi has taken a lurch away from Italy's traditional enthusiasm for Europe, inciting Renato Ruggiero, its pro-European foreign minister, to resign. In France, two prominent Socialists recently published proposals calling for a re-think of traditional French attitudes towards the EU, including a re-think of the farm policy. In Britain, the government may be poised to propose the creation of a UN-type Security Council for Europe which would ride above the existing Brussels institutions and which be headed (no surprise) by Britain, France and Germany.

At one level, these events are nationally-specific and coincidental. Berlusconi's right-wing coalition is dependent on support from the right-wing, xenophobic Northern Alliance and post-fascist National Alliance parties; so some Euro-sceptic rhetoric is to be expected. In France, the forthcoming Presidential elections will pit Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin against the Gaullist incumbent, Jacques Chirac; so it is urgent for the Socialists to up-date their European thinking. In Britain, the idea of a European Security Council looks like a repeat of traditional reflexes: the British do not like the process of political integration in Europe, and repeatedly imagine that they can persuade other members that an inter-governmental system is better. They keep saying: ``The argument is going our way.'' But it isn't.

At a deeper level, these events are closely related. What binds them together is the knowledge that the long-standing, familiar bargains between today's EU members will be massively disrupted a few years down the road of enlargement of the Union which is to encompass most of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. When this happens, it is a racing certainty that the existing members will lose out, in several ways:

They will have to share their political decision-making powers with the new members,

they will have to share their economic advantages, and, in particular,

they will face the prospect of a significant budgetary redistribution from the rich existing members to the (much poorer) new members. Some traditional policies, like the CAP, will be unsustainable in an enlarged EU.

On balance, of course, the economic downside to enlargement should only be a short-run problem, mainly a matter of perceptions and sectoral vested interests. Liberalisation, free trade and competition in a larger EU should, in the medium-term, produce benefits for all, including existing members; and in its present form the CAP is in any case unsustainable, with or without enlargement. But in the short-term, perceptions and vested interests are the very stuff of political debate.

Enlargement's political downside is another matter. No matter how the cake is sliced, the political leverage of any one member is bound to be less in an EU of 25-30 members than in one of 15; this loss of leverage is unavoidable, structural and permanent.

This poses particular problems for France and Britain, two of Europe's oldest nation-states which have still not fully adjusted, fifty years on, to the loss of their empires.

On the contrary: both still pretend to strut the international stage as ``great powers,'' as witnessed in recent months by Tony Blair's well-meaning but slightly absurd activism as America's frenzied chief acolyte in the war against terrorism.

Everybody knows that, if the enlarged EU is to function effectively, the member states must not merely acquiesce in the dilution of their national political leverage, they must even accelerate the process: there must be more majority voting, and it must be easier to achieve. So far, Britain and France have been in denial on the issue.

The Nice summit of a year ago was supposed to open the door to enlargement by reforming the EU's institutions. But France insisted, single-handedly, on steps that ensured that majority voting would become more difficult and less representative. The reason for this was that France demanded to have the same number of votes in the Council of Ministers as Germany, even though Germany's population is 36% larger.

Last week Pascal Lamy, a French Socialist European Commissioner, called for a re-think of many French European policies. His fundamental idea is that France must abandon its insistence on equality with Germany. Such a move would be fundamental, for if France could no longer assert political leverage by maximising its position as a ``big'' country, it would have to fall back on the logic endorsed by the ``small'' countries: more majority voting.

The British, by contrast, seem to be conforming to stereotype: don't join it, fight it. They too can see that an enlarged EU will not work without more integration. Yet what do they propose? A large retreat to inter-governmentalism. It is rather extraordinary, but oh so predictable.