ICE - special | All stories

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.

The candidate countries that will join the EU next year have brought new layers of diversity to an already diverse EU. Did they expect it to be so difficult to reach agreement on how the EU should function in the future? Pavel Telicka is the Czech Republics Ambassador to the EU

In the end the biggest disagreement among the 25 nations gathered in Brussels to decide the constitution was voting power. Germany and France, which together account for one-third of the bloc's population want the voting system to reflect their size. That is decision a majority of states representing a majority of population would be enough to take decisions. But Spain and Poland fought a fierce battle to hold on to a voting system agreed three years ago at the Nice summit. This guaranteed both countries 27 votes each in the future enlarged European

Defence policy was also a contentious part of the constitution debate. The mutual defence clause - which obliges EU countries to assist any other member that comes under attack - had originally been objected to by the EU's four neutral countries - Sweden, Finland, Ireland and Austria. Austria has since said it's more willing to accept a revised proposal. But why was the issue so important for Austria?