Unemployment in Eastern European nations that will join the European Union in May, including Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, may rise from their current near-record levels

Unemployment in Eastern European nations that will join the European Union in May, including Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, may rise from their current near-record levels as companies struggle to compete. Job cuts ``are crucial to reducing costs and lowering our coal prices so we can compete after joining the EU,'' said Maksymilian Klank, president of Poland's state-owned Kompania Weglowa SA, Europe's largest coal mining company by production, at a Warsaw press conference last week. The Polish and Slovak second-quarter jobless rates of 20 percent and 17 percent were more than double the EU average of 8 percent, based on figures compiled by Eurostat. The Czech Labor Ministry will probably report today that unemployment was unchanged at 10 percent in September, according to 13 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. Voters in the 10 mainly Eastern European countries that are joining the EU were promised that unemployment would fall as companies gain access to new customers and older members open borders to the East. With accession seven months away, governments and many businesses say they expect to trim workforces to survive in an enlarged trading region of 450 million people. Unemployment has risen in the future EU countries even as growth in the entrants' combined $487 billion economy has outpaced the EU this year. Average growth in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia, the largest of the 10 entrants, totaled an annual 3 percent in the second quarter. By contrast, France and Germany, two of the three largest EU countries, fell into recession.