Five years of Slovakian membership in the EU have brought a lot of changes to Slovak people's lives. Two main issues include converting the Slovak crown to the Euro and joining the Schengen area. Despite the generally positive pro-European atmosphere on the political sceneand the common understanding of the Slovakian external policy toward the EU, the tense mood among the parties and the polls inside the national parliament "risk the reputation of Slovakia," Prime Minister Robert Fico told New Europe in an interview with Vladimira Briestenska.

How would you evaluate the first five years as part of the European Union. Can we call it a beneficial period for Slovakia?

Without any doubts. These five years have been not only a beneficial but also a successful period for Slovakia. You know, one thing is to get the membership in the EU and mainly if it is so important for the politics that they are willing to accept also the non-favourable conditions. And this has happened to Slovakia in few cases as well. But it is something absolutely different to reach success afterwards and to gain the possible maximum from the membership, as it requires hard work, which I can say my government has done and therefore we can see the results

With its controversial six-month EU presidency coming to an end, the Czech Republic's eurosceptic President Vaclav Klaus made sure Saturday that the incoming Swedes knew what to expect from the Lisbon Treaty debate. 

Klaus said that the European Union was "squaring the circle" with guarantees granted to Ireland before its vote on the treaty.

"I find this amusing and above all undignified," Klaus, whose country holds the EU presidency until the end of this month, told Saturday's edition of the Pravo daily. "We all know that it's impossible to square the circle, but it is exactly what these countries have tried to do. To say that the concessions don't change anything about the Lisbon Treaty is silly," he added.

"Although it is written in the treaty that not all countries ... will have their own commissioner, now suddenly it is promised that they will," Klaus said. "Every normal human being, a first grade pupil, would know that it is a change and that somebody is promising it. So it is a change," he said.

The Czech president's comments were likely to open a debate on whether the treaty's ratification process should be renewed just over a week before Sweden takes the reigns.

Since the disbanding of the November 17th terrorist group, Greek police have breathed easier. Formed during the 1967-1974 dictatorship in Greece, it was one of the last militant organisations still active in Europe, responsible for a series of attacks against Western diplomats and domestic politicians. The authorities finally broke it up in 2002, following a botched bombing attack on a ferry company.

Although spinoff groups continued to operate, with one firing a rocket-propelled grenade at the US Embassy two years ago, revolutionary violence appeared to have run out of steam. Greece, it seemed, was ready to turn the page.

That changed, though, on December 6th, 2008. The police shooting of an Athens teenager not only unleashed weeks of rioting and destruction, but appears to have revived a seemingly moribund tradition -- namely, urban guerrillas armed with manifestos and bombs.

Several such organisations have emerged in the months since 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos died during an altercation between youth gangs and police.

More than 2,000 Roma (Gypsies) who fled Kosovo during the conflict in the 1990s still live in Konik refugee camp near Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro.

The sprawling slum of tents and shacks is built near the largest rubbish dump in Montenegro.

The mayor of Podgorica recently said the refugees should go back to where they came from.

Save the Children is working to integrate the Roma, but few stay long in the local school.

As the UN marks World Refugee Day, Save the Children's Phoebe Greenwood meets two men who describe appalling living conditions at the largest refugee camp in the Balkans.

Reporting from Brussels -- Like many spy tales in fiction and reality, "Background to Danger" begins in a train station...

Fast-forward six decades into a transformed landscape. Europe has erased internal borders. Instead of fighting Nazis or communists, spy agencies use satellites and wiretaps to track Islamic terrorists who conspire on the Internet.

But one thing has not changed much. Trains, stations and the gritty neighborhoods that surround them are often the backdrop to danger.

Rail passengers were slaughtered in terrorist bombings in Paris in 1995 and Madrid nine years later. On a foggy Tuscan morning in 2003, a police ID check in a second-class compartment set off a point-blank shootout with a Red Brigades militant, the author of a manifesto proclaiming a leftist-Islamic militant alliance. Her companion and a police officer died.

And it was aboard a train to Paris that a Moroccan Belgian informant decided on a risky gambit after departing the Gare du Midi station here in the Belgian capital: Fearing betrayal by a handler, he surrendered to police and announced that he was a spy. After his French and Belgian spymasters reconciled with him, they sent him on an undercover mission to Al Qaeda's Afghan camps, according to his book, "Inside the Jihad," written under the alias Omar Nasiri.

Spies, terrorists, smugglers and other stealthy types use trains in Western Europe because they are fast, cheap and efficient. Unlike airports, rail travel also offers anonymity: Authorities don't routinely check papers, search luggage or use metal detectors.

Message to Americans: be grateful you don't have "fast, cheap and efficient" passenger trains like Western Europeans have... because of trains and the "gritty neighborhoods that surround" train stations — Europe is Doomed™.

The UK's Conservative MEPs have formed a new "anti-federalist" European Parliament bloc.

The new European Conservatives and Reformists Group includes 55 MEPs from across eight member states.