THE EU LAMPOONED

The Czech Republic, which took over the rotating presidency of the European Union in January, has landed itself in a cultural debacle.

On Thursday, the Czech deputy premier, Alexandr Vondra, came to Brussels to see for himself what the brouhaha at the EU's headquarters was all about.

"Entropa" -- by David Cerny, a Czech artist who is no stranger to controversy -- dominates the lobby of the EU's Justus Lipsius Building. Measuring 25 x 25 meters (yards) it shows the outlines of EU nations on a tubular grid showing each nation, warts and all.

The artist says it is just tongue-in-cheek stuff.

His installation shows France as being on strike, Italy a land where soccer is an "auto-erotic system of sensational spectacle" and Germany laced by autobahns roughly in the shape of a Swastika cross.

The Netherlands is covered by floodwaters pierced only by minarets of mosques. Polish clergy raise -- Iwo Jima-style -- the rainbow flag of the gay community in their arch-Catholic country. And Sweden is -- what else? -- a box of prefab furniture.

There has been one formal protest: from Bulgaria, which objects to being depicted as a squat toilet.

Paul Gerard, a Frenchmen who works nearby, said he wasn't shocked.

"It's true. The French are always striking," he laughed.

Olga Capa, a Portuguese working at the European Commission, found the show "a bit shocking ... but not offensive, really."

Could the Czech Republic -- a country where freedom of thought was suppressed for decades under Communism -- resort to taking down an art exhibit because it seen as too provocative?

"If that happens," Cerny told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Wednesday from Prague, "it would mean going back to communism. It would mean denial of freedom of speech."

That’s the pity. The EU was suppose to prevent Europe’s slide into communism or repeating the errors of the tyrannical episodes of its past.