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This Letter from Prague is my first as an EU citizen. In fact this is not my only first this week. On Monday I made my first trip abroad as a citizen of a European Union member state. Of all places, I travelled to Brussels.

This week the prime ministers of the Visegrad Four - a loose alliance of 4 central European states -the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland -met to debate the future of the grouping now that all its members have joined the European Union. Contrary to the expectations of those who believe that the Visegrad Group is now obsolete, the prime ministers decided to keep the grouping active within the EU. Radio Prague's David Vaughan spoke to Ivan Jancarek, director of the EU section at the Czech Foreign Ministry about the future role of the Visegrad

Initial enthusiasm in Central Europe for quickly adopting the euro has cooled in recent weeks. In part, this is because governments in the region are reluctant to quicken the pace of reforms and rein in their budget deficits in order to meet the preconditions for eurozone entry. Another factor is that the European Commission is very unlikely to take disciplinary action against the new EU member states. Brian Kenety reports.

The journalist and author Neal Ascherson is one of Britain's leading experts on central and eastern Europe. He first visited Poland in 1957, and has spent a great deal of time in the region in the decades since then. Mr Ascherson recently paid a visit to Prague, where I spoke to him at an outdoor café. Before getting on to the recent eastwards enlargement of the European Union, I asked Neal Ascherson if that other alliance, NATO, was still relevant, so many years after the end of the Cold War:

The EU's executive commission has placed six of the newly admitted EU member states, including the Czech Republic, under increased financial surveillance because their public deficits currently exceed EU limits. However the commission said it would be benevolent and was according the six new members several years to bring their deficits in line with the provisions of the 1997 Stability and Growth Pact. The Pact requires members of the European Union to hold their annual deficits to less than three percent of output.

The European Union commissioner for enlargement, Guenter Verheugen, came to Prague on Tuesday with a simple message: The Czech Republic is now a "full and equal member" of the bloc and must defend its own interests in Brussels — but there is no reason to fear that Czech sovereignty or cultural identity will suffer. Brian Kenety reports.

Ten days after the Czech Republic became a full member of the European Union, key Czech political figures took a day trip to Brussels to celebrate. Pavla Horakova went with them.

The EU constitution in its draft form is too complicated for ordinary citizens to understand, former Czech president Vaclav Havel said on Monday. Mr Havel, who was in Brussels to take part in EU enlargement celebrations, welcomed steps to introduce a European constitution but noted it needed to be formulated in simple terms in order to assure citizens voting in referenda know exactly what they are voting for. Mr Havel added that he would like to see a constitution that one-tenth as long and uncomplicated enough for children to study it in schools.

In a month's time Czechs will go to the polls to elect their first ever European MPs. The election campaign is in full swing and the parties are trying to appeal to voters in various ways. One of the parties has put up billboards mocking the poor ability of the ruling Social Democrats to communicate in foreign languages in EU institutions. They are hinting at the scandal that was caused by the sudden resignation of the government's original candidate for EU commissioner Milos Kuzvart. Rumour had it that it was his poor knowledge of English that

When the Czech Republic joined to the European Union on the first of May, the Delegation of the European Commission in Prague ceased to exist. There's no cause for alarm — it was merely transformed into a "Representation" office of the Commission. Such offices exist now in all 25 member states and they carry out many of the same duties as the old Delegaations, acting as a liaison with Brussels. Frenchman Christian Bourgin, the old Delegation's first counsellor, is now acting Head of the new Representation. He spoke to Radio Prague's Brian