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hings have quieted down at Prague Castle, Klaus's seat of office. The liberal-conservative Civic Democratic Party (ODS) he co-founded has broken ranks and recently voted in favor of the reform treaty. The president's euro-skepticism has pushed him to the periphery of the country's political scene.

His newly founded right-wing Party of Free Citizens (SSO) is expected to fare even worse in the European elections than Lepper's Self Defense.

Opinion polls have registered increasing enthusiasm for the EU in the new member states. According to a Eurobarometer survey, a majority of citizens in Poland, the Czech Republic, the Baltic states, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Romania believe that accession to the EU brought their countries economic growth and democratic progress.

Poland's farmers -- Lepper's clientele -- used to be the problem children of the EU, but are now regarded as a source of stability. In 2007, 14.7 percent of Poles still worked in the farming sector, compared to just two percent in Germany. A few years ago the vast majority of them were vehemently opposed to the EU and feared that large swathes of Polish farmland would be bought up by Germans. But by 2008, three quarters of farmers already believed that Poland's agricultural sector had benefited from EU membership.

The EU cut €220 million in payments to Bulgaria and froze a further €340 million because Bulgaria was incapable of putting the money to effective use as a result of endemic corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency. But surprisingly, the ensuing public anger wasn't directed at Brussels but against their own politicians, who had led the country into the EU but weren't able to tap the EU's financial resources.