It is a measure of the introversion and strategic poverty of Britain's current conversation about Europe that only two EU-related matters have much domestic salience this weekend. The first is the emergence from the House of Commons of James Wharton's private member's bill on an in-out EU referendum, which now moves to the House of Lords. The second is the latest chapter in the continuing hysteria – and, yes, nastiness – over the scale of Bulgarian and Romanian migration to the UK when common travel rights kick in in the new year.

To say this is not to argue that these developments lack significance. Both of them undoubtedly have real resonance in British politics. The Wharton bill seeks to put the UK's membership of the EU at the centre of British politics between now and 2017, by which date the bill requires the holding of a referendum. The migration scare, on the other hand, is a particularly shameless variant of the core anti-European pretence that the EU is all about "them" prospering at the expense of "us". Both issues are in part the products of an anti-European agenda, backed by a biased press, whose immediate importance lies in their impact within the Conservative party and between the Tories and Ukip, but whose longer-term effect – and intention – is to feed a general fear of foreigners and scepticism towards the work of the EU.

These priorities are particularly shabby when in fact something of genuine importance was happening in Europe this week. The EU summit that ended in Vilnius yesterday sought to set the dial on a new and better partnership between the EU and the nations on its eastern flank, which must all balance relations between the EU to the west and Russia to the east. Russia's active hostility towards such partnerships with the EU means progress at the summit was limited. Both Georgia and Moldova initialled association agreements with the EU in Vilnius, but Armenia and Ukraine (the latter by far the largest country involved) have stopped short.

At a time when prejudices against the EU are being so energetically fanned here, it is important to remember how important all this still is. After 1989, seeking to bring Europe together in the aftermath of communism, the UK was rightly in the van of attempts to get the EU to enlarge to the east, beyond the German and Austrian borders. The new movement of labour rights which are now exciting such hostility on the right are part of the solemn promise of an embrace that we made back then. So, in its own way, is the process inching forward in Vilnius this week. In spite of its many defects and problems, the European project remains a process of historic importance. Britain was right to be part of it in 1989, and is right to remain part of it now.