Tiny feet are being stamped. The Daily Telegraph’s Bruno Waterfield has the details:
Nicolas Sarkozy has sparked a diplomatic row by attacking the ‘wounding and outrageous’ refusal of the Czech president to fly a European Union flag from Prague Castle.
The French president sided with federalist Euro-MPs who are engaged in a bitter feud with Vaclav Klaus, the Czech president and a Eurosceptic. Senior MEPs, including the president of the European Parliament, Hans Gert Poettering, caused a diplomatic incident ten days ago after demanding that Mr Klaus hoist the European flag over his residence during bad tempered talks in Prague.
“It was a wound, it was an outrage to see that flags had been taken down from public buildings,” said President Sarkozy, the current holder of the EU’s six-month rotating presidency which he hands over to the Czech Republic in January.
“Mr Poettering can count on the full support of the French president.
In a way, however, Sarkozy is right. Merely “removing” the EU flag was an outrage, if not quite in the sense that the French president meant. Far better if this wretched rag had been torn down by jubilant, cheering crowds and ceremonially burned. The ashes could then have been flushed into some rank Bohemian sewer. That, I think, would have been fitting. And a lot more fun.