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As EU expansion approaches, all eyes are on regulations that will influence daily life in the new member states - but cultural will also undergo some changes. A project led by Austrian European member of Parliament Mercedes Echerer called "EU XXL" brought together filmmakers from the old and new member states to make sure this new era in European cinema gets off to a good start.

Jobs, study and travel figure strongly in the ambitions of young Slovenes. But as Ksenija Samardzija-Matul found out on the streets of Ljubljana, many young Slovenes are also looking forward to getting a job - outside of Slovenia.

The Roma, or gypsies, will become the biggest ethnic minority group within the EU, when the bloc expands in May next year - There are now an estimated 8.5 million Roma living in Europe, around 70 per cent of them are in Central and Eastern Europe. They are also Europe's poorest group. So will they do better as EU citizens? The first Roma rights lobby group to base itself in the EU heartland has opened an office in Brussels. At it's helm is a young Hungarian woman of Roma origin, Angela Kocze. Petra Hajdu of Radio Budapest asked Angela what can

The 11 official languages of the European Union already make for quite a mouthful, but when a fresh batch of members states joins next year - it will cost European taxpayers 1 billion euros a year just to translate all the speeches and official texts from Brussels. But it also means better job prospects for translators from the candidate countries....

Five Infrastructure projects in Austria will also receive EU funds. They include the Brenner road tunnel linking Italy and Austria, rail and water connections with the Slovak capital Bratislava and a motorway between Vienna and Sopron in Hungary. But is all of this well thought through? Austrian transport expert Hermann Knoflacher from the technical university says by developing more motorways the EU is heading in the wrong direction.

Christmas is almost upon us - a time of cosy evenings round the fire and carol singing. The Czech composer, Vaclav Halek, composes and arranges traditional Czech Christmas carols, but also carols from around the world.

After the washout of the Brussels summit, Europe's leaders have spent the week mopping up the mess. The constitutional negotiations collapsed over the question of voting rights in the enlarged EU, with Poland arguing to keep the power it gained in the Nice Treaty three years ago, and Germany looking for voting strength to match its population and contributions to the EU budget. But now many Poles are worried their Prime Minister's tough talk could spell trouble for Poland.

One issue agreed at the EU summit was a 62 billion euro investment plan for transport and research projects - a lot of them in central Europe. Projects include rail routes between Ljubljana, Budapest and Kiev, the A1 motorway between the Polish city of Gdansk and Vienna - and the construction of a second railway line to the port of Koper in Slovenia.

14 years ago, almost to the day, thousands of people marched across the border between Slovakia and Austria at Hainburg on the river Danube. It was the first time many of them had done so since the Iron curtain went up decades before. One of the initiators of the Hainburg march was Martin Butora - who's now running as a candidate for the upcoming presidential elections in Slovakia. Martina Grenova talks to him about how Slovakia has changed over the past decade and what he imagines the countries future role in the EU to be.

As Poland works on its future EU policy others are worrying about the future of the EU without the streamlining that the constitution would have brought. It may now be many months or years before the constitution-writers take up their pens again. What impact could this have on the future of the EU? Heather Grabbe is the Vice Director from the London based Centre for European Reform.