Vaclav Klaus, the Czech President, finally signed the document to accept the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty which was put to him by the Czech Senate... and about time too.

Unfortunately, many believed Klaus – Mr Professor, as he is known in the Czech Republic – when he said that he did not want to sign the treaty because he was ‘afraid’ of the return of ethnic Germans who were expelled from the Republic following WWII.

It runs so much deeper. Thanks to Klaus, the EU wasted millions of taxpayers’ hard earned euros in holding a summit which was largely ineffectual. Not only that, but the EU will now have to set up another summit to do what was supposed to be done last week – to fine tune the treaty prior to implementation.

The truth of the matter is that Klaus is a renegade and one must really question his motives for opposing the treaty. The Czech Constitutional Court delivered its ruling on Tuesday and he said that while he respects the court’s decision, he does not agree with it.

Let us dig deeper and take a look into Klaus’s psyche. To get a better understanding of the man, it is pertinent to note that since 1990, he has received nearly 50 honorary degrees and published over 20 books on various social, political, and economic subjects, which are overwhelmingly collections of his own articles and speeches; the most recent of these are five yearbooks of his comments as President.

One of his former Foreign Ministers, Jirí Dienstbier, said of Klaus that, “while we were concerned with running the country, Klaus was concerned with building his own power through attacking us as ‘elitist’.”

Since 2003 Klaus has been publishing articles praising the primary role of “the gray zone” as a positive influence during the Communist regime, while downplaying the importance of the small minority of dissidents like Vaclav Havel. This is interpreted by some as an attempt to denigrate the part of Czech history which he cannot claim to have been a part of. Although he regularly criticised former President Havel (widely regarded as a hero in the Czech resistance to Communist rule) for having used his power to veto laws, Klaus exercises his veto rather more frequently than Havel, while generally labelling vetoed bills as illiberal, ‘dangerous’ and a threat to the country.

Klaus also believes that climate change is a figment of the imagination. He has written many articles and has given many speeches against any sharing of sovereignty with the EU. In 2005 Klaus called for the EU to be “scrapped” and replaced by a free trade area to be called the “Organisation of European States”. He also attacked the EU for undermining freedom and being as big a threat as the Soviet Union.

In 2005 he remarked to a group of visiting US politicians that the EU was a “failed and bankrupt entity”. In October 2008 he said that the EU is controlled by the big powers as they controlled Europe in 1938.

The Lisbon Treaty is set to make the EU more transparent, effective and powerful on the world stage. It also seeks to eliminate instances such as this one. The whole of Europe wanted the treaty pushed through. How can one little megalomaniac such as Klaus halt the wishes of over 450 million people? If Mr Professor were so worried about the EU, he should have put the matter to a referendum in the Czech Republic and should have left the union if the country so wished. Politics is about serving the people – not furthering one’s personal ambitions and getting one’s own way. It is quite clear that Mr Professor spat his dummy out in a tantrum. Now let’s get on with it please. We have wasted quite enough time and money. One wonders whether Mr Professor will offer to reimburse the citizens of the EU for this debacle. And one seriously wonders how such people come to power – then again, we have had our own megalomaniacs over the years.