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The town hall of Slany near Prague has begun a war on defaulters. Over the weekend several Roma families were forced out of their apartments. With nowhere to go, they now live on the street. While the authorities claim the drastic step was a last resort, the town's Roma community has accused them of discrimination. Mirna Solic reports:

While in some areas of life Czechs will hardly notice anything has changed once the country actually joins the European Union next year, elsewhere the changes will be very visible. One such change will affect the country's border crossings. On the day of its accession, the Czech Republic will become part of the EU's customs union and that means customs checkpoints will disappear from the border crossings, as the Czech Republic will be surrounded only by other EU member states.

It's just two days since the Czech Republic's first ever referendum, and people are already talking about the next one. Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla conceded recently that the far-reaching reforms of the European Union - to be formally presented at this week's Thessaloniki summit - would have to be approved by the Czech people in a second referendum. My colleague Rob Cameron has been leafing through the draft of the much-discussed EU Constitution and joins me in the studio now. Rob - just how momentous are these changes to the EU?

"Don't meet with the communists!" That's the gist of the petition recently signed by 250 intellectuals. They want to convince other political parties not to meet with the Communist Party. For 13 years then President Vaclav Havel isolated the communist voice in Czech politics. Now President Vaclav Klaus is giving the Communist Party the chance to participate. Votes cast by communists in Parliament helped Mr. Klaus secure the Czech presidency in late February. When President Klaus invited the traditionally euro-pessimistic communists to take part

Jiri Pehe is a former advisor to Vaclav Havel and an independent political analyst who has closely monitored the results of the referendum on EU accession in the Czech Republic. Earlier on Saturday he spoke to Radio Prague's Jan Velinger, saying there was little doubt the referendum result was a decision of some historic magnitude:

Current and former leading Czech politicians who have contributed to the preparation of the Czech Republic's accession to the European Union met at the Foreign Ministry to celebrate the culmination of their efforts. Shortly after the polling stations closed and the first preliminary results started coming in, Rob Cameron spoke to some of the guests at the event. Pavel Rychetsky is deputy prime minister and the country's justice minister.

Jablunkov is the most eastern town in the country just few kilometres away from the borders with Poland and Slovakia. Dita Asiedu has been following the developments there:

As a member of the European Union, the Czech Republic will naturally enjoy much closer relations with other EU member states. But how will membership of the European Union affect the Czech Republic's relationship with the United States? This week, the representatives of the US embassy and the Delegation of the European Commission in Prague discussed Czech-US relations in the broader context of US-EU relations.

It's a historic day for the Czech Republic - 77 percent of people backed EU entry in the country's referendum. Rob Cameron spent Saturday afternoon at Cerninsky Palac - the headquarters of the Czech Foreign Ministry - where members of the government gathered to hear the results as they came in. Rob, presumably it was smiles all round?

Before polls closed in the European Union referendum at two on Saturday afternoon, we visited a polling station on Prague's Bulharska Street to find out how people had been voting and what they expected EU membership would mean for them.