Countdown to Europe | All stories

For the last four or five years the Czech Republic has, like the other nine countries joining the European Union on May 1, been very busy adopting some 80,000 pages of EU legislation, covering everything from waste disposal to the supervision of abattoirs. But with just two months to go before accession, has the Czech Republic managed to make all the necessary preparations, or - at this late stage - is there still more to do? That's a question we put to Ivo Slosarcik, who works at the Prague-based think tank Europeum.

After a ten-year pre-accession period, the Czech Republic is becoming an EU member on May 1, 2004. Countdown to Europe is our new series on various aspects of Czech membership of the European Union. We will be finding out how life is going to change for ordinary Czechs - students, entrepreneurs, farmers, pensioners, members of minorities - as well as what it will mean for foreigners who visit the Czech Republic or want to work and live here.