PRAGUE -- Would-be Czech prime minister Vladimir Spidla, whose Social Democrats (CSSD) topped weekend elections, immediately vowed to lead the ex-communist country into the EU within two years.

"Our objective is a modern social state and joining the European Union," said Spidla, ahead of a meeting Sunday with President Vaclav Havel who is expected to ask him to try to form a government.

And he again lashed out at defeated rightwing ex-prime minister Vaclav Klaus, whose Civic Democrats (CDS) came second in the elections Friday and Saturday, with 24 percent of the vote compared to the CSSD's 30 percent.

"A liberal and conservative strategy, which led the country into crisis, has failed," he told AFP.

The bespectacled 51-year-old, who only took over the CSSD reins last April, sprinkles speeches with phrases like "market economy with a social orientation" and "human solidarity".

Spidla is known to have admired former French prime minister Lionel Jospin, with whom he shares a physical resemblance.

The contrast between his low-key style and that of charismatic Klaus is stark. But foreign observers are nonetheless impressed.

"He's very impressive. He knows his files by heart. But he is a bit of a grey mouse," said one Western diplomat ahead of the legislative elections held Friday and Saturday.

The labor minister in the outgoing minority government, Spidla is substantially less forthright than his often controversial predecessor as CSSD leader Milos Zeman and is promoting a "new style" and "open character" on the political stage.

On European Union membership, a key aim of the Czech Republic in the next few years, he shares Zeman's desire for joining the 15-nation bloc by 2004 and wants to hold a referendum on the issue next year.

Spidla was born on April 22, 1951, in Prague. He studied history there, although he then took a series of working-class jobs before the collapse of communism in his homeland.

After the 1989 Velvet revolution he was a founder member of a CSSD regional grouping in southern Bohemia and joined the party's leadership in 1992 before being elected to Parliament four years later.

Critics say he sometimes looks like a timid civil servant but he has gained confidence. In a pre-election press conference he listed those with whom he wanted to share power.

The list openly omitted confidants of former party leader Zeman, the forthright figure who has led a minority government for the last four years and is retiring after these elections.

"My government must be competent and above all decent and trustworthy," he said, in a thinly-veiled reference to some aides of his predecessor, who have been criticized for dubious activities under communism.

"We can win these elections. The CSSD is today the political leader of the Czech Republic," he said with a faint smile.

Divorced from his first wife with whom he has two sons, Spidla remarried in 1974 to Viktorie, a Librarian, who has a son and daughter from her first marriage.