· on this basis, simulate the relevant scenarios of possible developments in the Slovak economy and their social implications as regards approximation to the EU;
· approximately quantify the anticipated costs and benefits of Slovakia's accession or non-accession to the EU in aggregate, sectoral and cross-sectional structure;
· identify the priorities of the accession process and extend the arguments for the need for transition periods;
· characterise the readiness of the Slovak enterprise sphere for the adaptation to the conditions of Slovakia's integration to the EU;
· for the purposes of updating the medium-term economic policy, provide ideas for mitigating integration risks and creating suitable conditions for the utilisation of the benefits of integration;
· provide the initial integration orientation for the elaboration of sectoral, branch and regional policies and concepts;
· encourage entrepreneurs and turn their attention to the swift organic incorporation of integration contexts and conditions of the adaptation strategy;
· provide objective arguments to make the expectations of the public and social partners more realistic as regards Slovakia's accession to the EU. The experience from the preparation and course of the seminar on the preliminary results of this study, and above all the nature of several opinions and positions presented in the mass media in connection with this, demonstrated that besides the above goals it should help fulfil several specific goals. The results of the study should significantly help overcome the low and insufficient availability of information and the consequential unrealistically optimistic and overly pessimistic expectations.

Also related to this is the somewhat wide-spread presumption that a large scope of problems and difficulties in our economy and, in particular, the demanding nature of their resolution are or will be connected with and brought about by the integration into the EU. In this context, the study is designed to show that amid sharpened global competition we will have to cope with a major section of the problems anyway and the integration process is something that can facilitate and speed up the necessary adaptation to globalisation. If we prepare for accession to the EU effectively and make use of the chances and possibilities related to it efficiently, the integration into the single economic area will act as a catalyst of the effective adaptation of our economy. In this respect, the study also pursues a certain mobilisation goal to help overcome the passive wait-and-see opinions and attitudes and increase motivation so that all structural parts of our economy, at every level, make the best use of the time remaining before Slovakia accedes to the EU and thus improve our readiness to make use of the advantages and manage the risks of integration. Certain facts should be underlined concerning the concept of the present study and the expressive value of its conclusions.

Even though the authors could use experience from similar foreign works, in a number of respects the preparation of this study has a pioneering nature. Not only is this the first work of this kind in our country, its preparation also had to build upon significantly different conditions as regards the specific situation and state of the Slovak economy, as well as the relatively small scientific capacity available, scope and quality of background information, availability of certain specific data, as well as the short amount of time due to the tight deadline set. As regards understanding the expressive value of the study, it needs to be pointed out that it is conditional upon a number of factors, the most important of them being the fact that the accession process and integration into EU structures has the nature of "docking" to a moving target. This means that the results of the authors' effort to quantify the costs and benefits from perspectives as relevant as possible cannot be interpreted as "hard" data. Quantifications, even if acquired through model simulations and calculations, provide only the basic idea of the possible directions of the relevant processes, while the actual data on the real course of the processes can and typically will, to a varying extent, oscillate within a certain interval depending on the developments and changes in specific conditions in both the EU and our economy.