Sugar-coating cannot soften a tough presidency

EXPECT less sugar and more spice from Czech president Vaclav Klaus’s hardline eurosceptic views during his visit to Ireland.

The Czech government made it clear its rotating presidency of the EU which begins next January will be no exercise in sweetness — despite choosing the sugar cube as its emblem.

The innocent-looking sugar cube is a Czech invention and a major PR campaign features homegrown celebrities like Chelsea’s goalkeeper Petr Cech doing playful things with it under the official slogan, “We’ll make things sweeter for Europe.”

However, the Czech phrase also has a double meaning which more readily sums up the mood of the Government led by the president’s centre right Civic Democrats: “We’ll give Europe a taste of its own medicine.”

Famous for his rudeness, Mr Klaus does have a memorable turn of phrase, ominously warning Czech sovereignty would dissolve in the EU like “a cube of sugar in a cup of coffee”.

His waspish tongue was in evidence again last June when emerging from hospital after a hip operation, he insisted the Irish no vote meant Lisbon was finished, as “only patients — not EU treaties — should be resuscitated”.

A divisive political figure with a populist touch, he succeeded leftist intellectual playwright Vaclav Havel as president in 2003 and was narrowly re-elected to the post by parliament earlier this year.

After initially joining forces with Mr Havel in the Velvet Revolution that freed the country from Communism, the two men clashed during Mr Klaus’s time as prime minister between 1992-1997 when he adopted a strongly Thatcherite free-market approach to economic and social policy, before financial scandals led to the fall of his government.

He used the “velvet divorce” between the Czechs and Slovaks in 1993 to insist presidential powers were greatly reduced — a slight against Mr Havel that has now come back to haunt him.

The Lisbon treaty languishes in the Czech constitutional court, if it returns unaltered and the president still vetoes it, that would lead to a major crisis. Forget the sugar — it looks as if the Czech EU presidency could be as explosive as the country’s other famous invention — semtex.