ICE - special | All stories

Coming up in this week's Insight Central Europe, the European investment bank says 500 billion Euro are needed to bring the infrastructure in the EU candidate countries of Central and Eastern Europe up to the EU average. Roads, Rail water and energy all need massive investment. Admittedly the forecast growth in the transport business in EU candidate countries is huge. The consultancy firm A.T. Kearney reported this week that it's currently growing by around 14% a year - and will gather more steam after liberalisation and privatisation - but Central

Coming up in this week's Insight Central Europe - NATO held its first ever summit behind the old Iron Curtain this week to take decisions that have profoundly altered the Western military alliance. The summit in Prague expanded NATO's membership into what was once Soviet territory and approved a strategic shift in its military focus toward new threats from terrorism and rogue states.

Corruption, elections, NATO... and the return of the salmon - all this and more in

Coming up in this week's Insight Central Europe - At what point should the European Union finally close its doors and declare itself complete? Bulgaria & Rumania are pretty well assured entry in 2007, but do the Balkans or the Ukraine and Belarus "belong" to the EU?

Coming up in this week's Insight Central Europe - how free is the media in Central Europe? The first "media freedom index" throws up some surprising results: the Czech Republic comes last, far below Poland and Hungary, while Slovenia comes out top. Also in the program: a World Reborn - an American photographer documents Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe, and the graves in Poland that no-one visits on All Souls Day.

"Czech-Greek translator wanted for well-paid job in Brussels " - Coming up on this week's edition of Insight Central Europe, the linguistic challenges facing a 25-member European Union. Meanwhile, will 25 members actually be able to agree on anything? And will EU membership help or hinder the rights of ethnic minorities in Poland? Also this week, violin making in Slovakia, and the Austrian musicians who use antique instruments. That's in this week's Insight Central Europe.

In this week's Insight Central Europe we look at the demise of the Dutch government , how young Czechs feel about the possibility of travelling freely throughout the EU, and how long it will take Central Europe to become a part of the Schengen zone. Also in this edition: other travel and visa issues come to the fore with Moscow pressing for visa-free travel on non-stop trains to and from Kaliningrad, and a look at a Slovak village near Bratislava which boasts the reputation for having the best goose feasts in its 12 restaurants. Finally, a profile Hungarian novelist Imre Kertesz, who was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature last week.

The European Commission this week published its final progress reports on ten candidate countries' readiness for membership of the European Union, and recommended that they be allowed to join in 2004. In this week's Insight Central Europe, we look at how Poland's large farming community can expect to find life in the EU. Like other countries in the region, Slovakia has been criticised for its treatment of its Roma; does the latest EC report see any progress in race relations in Slovakia? And after around a century and a half of drinking rum, the

Coming up in this week's programme, we look at what kind of welcome refugees can expect to receive from the people and governments of Central Europe. The residents of a Austrian lakeside resort are up in arms over plans to open a new reception centre for asylum seekers, while the UNHCR slams a new Austrian rule barring some asylum seekers from government-run shelters. We visit a Polish refugee centre to see how asylum seekers are treated there, and also speak to refugees from the former Yugoslavia who've started a new life in the Czech Republic. All that and more in this week's Insight Central Europe.

This week's Insight Central Europe focuses on last weekend's elections in Slovakia, where former prime minister Vladimir Meciar's failure to regain power means that the path is clear for the country to join the European Union and NATO. Meanwhile, the unreformed Communist Party have made it into the Slovak parliament for the first time since the fall of communism. In the Czech Republic, former prime minister Milos Zeman's wish to become president could be thwarted by the man he groomed as his successor, Vladimir Spilda. And in Austria, an interesting project called "Euro Menu" believes that the route to solidarity in Europe is via people's stomachs. All those stories and more are in Insight Central Europe.