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In Budapest, ombudsmen from about 20 European countries held their general assembly this week. The ombudsman is a parliamentary institution which is protecting the rights of citizens against misuse by the state administration, or any kind of administration. This institution is exactly ten years old in Hungary. At the Budapest conference, special attention was paid to the representation and protection of ethnic and national minorities.

Wednesday 12th May sees the beginning of one of Central Europe's major classical music events - the 59th Prague Spring Festival - bringing together top orchestras, ensembles and soloists from around the world. This year the festival is special: last Saturday was the centenary of the great Czech composer Antonin Dvorak's death. Radio Prague's David Vaughan spoke to the festival director Roman Belor, for a taste of this year's special Prague Spring.

Slovakia became a member of the EU on Saturday, May 1. Despite all the celebrations she could have experienced in Bratislava, Martina Grenova from Radio Slovakia International set off for a journey to the UK instead. Travelling by coach from the Czech town of Brno, she met a group of Slovaks and Czechs leaving their countries behind to find a job in Britain. Great Britain along with Ireland and Sweden have left their labour markets open for EU newcomers. On the 21 hour journey in an overcrowded bus, Martina realized that citizens of the new EU

In theory citizens of the European Union should be able to live and work in any European country of their choosing. But the practice is quite different. The hundreds of thousands from new member states already working illegally in Western Europe will remain illegal - in most of Western Europe. Kerry Skyring spoke to Antonio Cruz of the Brussels based publication Migration Europe.

EU membership not only has practical implications for the ten countries that joined on May 1: there's also a cultural and intellectual dimension as well. Rob Cameron spoke to one of the Czech Republic's best-known authors Ivan Klima about what EU membership means for his country. He began by asking whether membership would mean a loss of identity for the Czech people:

"If you have no work, you have no life," says sixty year-old Wieslawa who has been working as a cleaning lady in Brussels for several years now. No, she hasn't got a permit but with unemployment running high in her home town of Biala Podlaska, she says she has no choice:

Just days after Slovenia joined the EU it was obvious that traffic was a problem in need of attention - especially along the border with Croatia where long delays are common. And with traffic volume expected to increase, Slovenia is hoping that joining the EU will help clear up some of those jams. Ksenija Samardzija-Matul reports:

There is a Czech proverb which says "The more languages you speak, the more you are a person." As Pavla Horakova now reports, Czech Television and Radio Prague recently carried out their own little survey: asking foreign journalists based in Prague to help them test to what extent that maxim holds true for future Czech Euro-MPs.

Can you explain qualified majority voting, horizontal measures and of course - gender mainstreaming? Talking about the EU is confusing. Chris Cummins spoke to Jackie Davis, editor of the Brussels magazine, E-Sharp.

An international train is about to arrive at the tiny railway station of Skalite, a little town of 5,000 people located on the Slovak-Polish border and not so far from the Czech one too. The station looks almost empty in the pleasant morning sunshine and looking around one could hardly imagine that one of the major pan-European transport corridors connecting Bratislava to Warsaw is supposed to cross the hilly Skalite area. Some 250 kms away in Bratislava politicians speak a lot about millions of euro pouring into such projects now Slovakia is a