(Brussels) Is it a joke? A very expensive hoax? A sly, shockingly satirical look at the 27 nations that make up the European Union?

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.

Britain is completely absent, reflecting its traditional aloofness from European integration.

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

The Czech government says Cerny lied to them because he was paid euro50,000 ($65,870) to round up the works of European artists representing all 27 EU nations and create a joint project, according to Vondra.

“David Cerny bears the full responsibility for not fulfilling his assignment,” Vondra said earlier this week. “We are now considering which steps to take.”

Cerny apologized at a press conference Thursday, promising to repay his fee to the government. He also he would remove any parts of the artwork that offended any nation’s pride.

“We are really sorry that we insulted individual nations,” he told reporters, singling out Bulgaria. “That’s a pity that some countries don’t like it.”

But the artwork has also drawn large crowds of spectators to the Justus Lipsius building, where art usually depicts a more saccharine Europe – French castles, Greek sunsets or Dutch canals.

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.”

He said the Czech government asked him to produce a concept piece of “27 artists (but) I quickly figured that would be technically and financially difficult to do.” The work in Brussels was created by “about 10 people” in the Czech Republic and abroad, he said.

Cerny noted that today’s Czech leaders have a record of opposition to totalitarian rule.

“I really hope those guys have a sense of humor,” he added.