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While the Czech Republic is hoping to benefit financially from membership of the European Union, accession will also mean the Czechs will have to pull their weight when it comes to donating aid to the developing world. The EU's commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid Poul Nielson has just been in Prague to explain what exactly EU membership will entail in this respect.

The frontrunner candidates for EU membership, including the Czech Republic, will most probably join the European Union a few months later than expected. Instead of on January 1st 2004, the countries will most likely become EU members in the spring of 2004. Speaking in Brussels on Tuesday, EU Commissioner for Enlargement Guenter Verheugen said that the exact date will depend on the time it will take to ratify the accession treaty. Since the treaty is expected to be several thousand pages long, current member states will not be pressured into speeding up their ratification. Mr Verheugen stressed, however, that the expansion process will have to be complete before the elections to the European Parliament in July 2004.

Leading government officials have met with Czech farmers to try to convince them of the long-term benefits of joining the European Union. Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla and Foreign Minster Cyril Svoboda addressed a gathering of over 1,000 farmers in south Bohemia on Monday in an effort to allay concerns about their future once the country joins the European Union. The Czech Republic is still negotiating the terms of the agriculture chapter of the accession agreement and Prime Minister Spidla promised the gathering that Czech farmers would get the best possible deal. Czech farmers say that if they feel that their livelihood would be threatened by EU accession they would try to convince people in their vicinity to vote against EU membership in the referendum next spring.

The Czech Republic is almost ready to join the European Union - but are its citizens in equally good form? The Czech Cabinet recently took a closer look at the state of people's health and decided that they need to undergo a radical transformation as well. Czechs drink too much, they smoke too much and an increasing number of them are overweight. Is the government's Health 21 action plan a good idea or is the state meddling in people's lives? Find out what some experts think in this week's Magazine with Daniela Lazarova.

The agriculture commissioner for the EU Franz Fischler has urged Czech farmers to see the benefits of the Czech Republic joining the European Union. On Friday he stated that Czech farmers would benefit from EU enlargement in the long run, while defended the EU. Mr Fischler did acknowledge the hard work that Czech farmers have undertaken in restructuring the agriculture industry since the fall of communism, and assured Czech farmers the agriculture sector would earn more money after enlargement. But, farm leaders are saying that unless the EU sets equal subsidy levels for new and current member states, they will ask Czech farmers to vote against EU accession in a referendum next spring.

Czech negotiators in Brussels only have six weeks left to complete delicate talks on the agriculture chapter, crucial for the Czech Republic to join the EU. In order to reinforce flagging support for the union among Czech farmers, the EU Agriculture Commissioner, Franz Fischler visited Prague this week. He met the Ministers of Agriculture of all the ten future member states to patch up the row over the future of the agriculture sector. Dita Asiedu reports:

Czech farmers staged a protest outside a Prague hotel on Thursday, where the agriculture ministers of ten EU candidate countries were meeting the EU commissioner for agriculture Franz Fischler. Some two hundred protestors were reported at the scene, some from neighbouring Slovakia. The farmers met Mr Fischler as well as the Czech Agriculture Minister Jaroslav Palas. Mr Fischler reiterated that he was bound by decisions agreed upon by the original 15 EU states. Czech farmers are worried that the European Commission's proposals for EU entry, including far lower subsidies for farming than in the original EU countries, would seriously hurt the agriculture sector.

The Czech government has proposed June 15th and 16th , 2003, as the dates for a referendum that will decide the Czech Republic's accession to the European Union; the final decision on the day of voting now lies with President Vaclav Havel. The Czechs are one of ten candidate nations in final talks to join the EU in the first half of 2004. Entering the 15-nation bloc has been a top priority for many post-Communist countries like the Czech Republic; however, difficult negotiations concerning the conditions of entry, especially limitations of labour movement and farm subsidies, have lowered EU support among many citizens. The region's politicians have agreed to hold referenda in succession beginning with Hungary, where support is highest, in the hope that a positive results will influence anti-EU voters in other candidate countries, to reconsider their choice.

The Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament has approved a resolution on the controversial Benes decrees, stating that they do not present a hurdle to the Czech Republic's accession to the EU. The verdict is based on the outcome of a legal expertise commissioned by the European Parliament which concluded that the decrees are not in violation of EU law. The Benes decrees, which sanctioned the expulsion of 2.5 million ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia after WWII, have been criticized by some groups in Austria and Germany who asked the Czech Republic to abolish the decrees before joining the European Union.

Some three thousand dissatisfied farmers and agriculture representatives gathered in Prague Wednesday to demonstrate against what they see as an imminent financial crisis in the agriculture sector. Farmers also protested agriculture accession terms proposed by the European Union, and called for more government support in areas of the country damaged by mid-August floods. The protest demonstration concluded at the Office of the government and the houses of parliament, where farmers blocked traffic and chanted slogans before presenting government and parliament members with a petition signed by more than 100, 000.