(PRAGUE) - The Czech Republic's eurosceptic president, Vaclav Klaus, said he favoured a referendum on giving up the country's koruna currency and adopting the euro, in an article published on Saturday.

"Each currency is an important symbol of the country and that is why the people must decide whether or not they want to be deprived of this particularly important symbol," Klaus said in a column in the newspaper Dnes.

"I am very critical of certain aspects of the euro," said Klaus, a liberal economist.

The accession treaty by which the Czech Republic joined the European Union in May 2004 calls for adopting the euro, but it does not set any date for its adoption.

Klaus's comments come after Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek announced last week that the center-right government has approved a plan for switching to the EU single currency, but did not fix a date for the changeover.

The finance ministry has already described 2012 as a "realistic" date for moving from the koruna to the euro, while cautioning that cutting the country's ballooning budget deficit is a precondition for this to take place.

Topolanek said a euro adoption date could be fixed once a raft of tax and spending cuts approved by his government last week have been given the go ahead in parliament.

The Czech National Bank will by the end of June draw up a detailed analysis of all the steps related to euro adoption, he added.

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