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Disagreement over the Slovenian minority living in Austria broke out this week, sparked by a comment made by an Austrian official about the Austrian State Treaty. The treaty deals with the protection of minorities in Austria.

Jewish mice, Nazi cats and Polish rats - you would not really expect such cartoon characters to appear in front of you when you travel the underground in Budapest. But, in fact, that's what you encounter as artwork from Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning Holocaust graphic novel Maus, based on the experiences of his parents during the Holocaust, has been put on display in Budapest's subway.

The European Union has decided to postpone accession talks with Croatia that were scheduled to begin last Thursday. Croatia needs to cooperate fully with the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia). Several EU countries, especially Britain, the Netherlands and Germany, have accused Croatia of not trying hard enough to capture the war crimes suspect General Ante Gotovina. But Austria, Hungary, Slovenia and Slovakia would have liked to see accession talks begin right away.

D-Day for every Slovak high school pupil: you walk into a classroom, up to a table with a dark green cloth and teachers sitting behind it. This is how Slovak pupils are examined when they are ready to leave high school at 18. The oral graduation exams are known as the "maturita" and have been present in the country for centuries. This year breaking the tradition and introducing a reformed maturita has met disapproval from high school graduates.

It is six years this week since the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined NATO - a milestone in the history of both the alliance and Central Europe. Last year NATO was enlarged even further, to include Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania and the three Baltic states. We look at Central Europe's relationship with the Alliance.

Slovak cinemas have a new title on the big-screen. Not a Hollywood blockbuster but a Hungarian film shot as a Central European co-production. Hungarian, Slovak and Polish filmmakers got together to film the story of Imre Nagy, the leader of the 1956 Hungarian anti-Soviet revolution. It's been a surprise success since it was released in Budapest last October - being seen by over 100,000 people when the expectation was for only about 10,000. On March 10th it opened in the Slovak capital Bratislava with humble expectations.

March 8 marked International Women's Day around the world. In Hungary, it is common for women to receive flowers from husbands, partners and male colleagues. But in much of Central Europe, Women's Day used to be a kind of "official" celebration under the old socialist regime and so today many people find it hard to celebrate spontaneously.

Ethnic minorities in Poland have for years had little access to media in their own languages or dialects. While the Hungarian minority in neighboring Slovakia had a round-the-clock service in their native language, the Belarusian minority in eastern Poland could only listen to short broadcasts in Belarusian a couple of times a week. But now things seem to be changing. In Silesia, southern Poland, more and more media are launching programmes in Silesian - a dialect of the most distinct ethnic minority in Poland.

In Slovenia, women are bearing by far the greater burden when it comes to raising children. That's probably no surprise to anyone but a new survey has highlighted just how out of balance are the roles of women and men when it comes to child-care and how parents are often torn between the demands of work and family.

With the Visegrad countries - Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, importing most of their crude oil and natural gas requirements from Russia, is Central Europe too dependent on Russian energy?