Czech civil-service law on ice

Czech president asks the constitutional court to rule on EU-required legislation intended to depoliticise the civil service.

The Czech Republic will miss an end-of-year deadline for introducing civil-service legislation required by the European Union, the head of the country’s constitutional court, Pavel Rychetský, has said.

The delay, caused when President Miloš Zeman referred the issue to the court, is the latest complication in the passage of a law that the EU had originally wanted the country to implement before it joined the EU in May 2004. One of the principal purposes of the EU’s proposals was to depoliticise the civil service.

The Czech Republic, the sole country in the EU not to have the EU-required legislation in force, could potentially see its access to regional funding restricted as a result.
The law played a central role in a battle between Zeman and the current government when the three-party coalition was still being formed. At that point, in December 2013, Zeman made adoption of the law a precondition for accepting the centrist government.

The law – a revised version of legislation passed in 2002 but never enacted – has now passed through parliament, winning the approval of the lower chamber on 10 September and of the upper chamber on 1 October, but Zeman then vetoed the legislation, objecting to a passage that restricts the number of deputy ministers and requires them to be politicians. Traditionally, deputy ministers in the Czech government have been civil servants.

Zeman said that the clause was a means of creating sinecures for the party faithful, warning, as he put it, that the law would produce “many snails and little salad”.
Parliament overturned the president’s veto last Friday (24 October), but

Zeman swiftly turned to the constitutional court, arguing, in addition, that procedures had not been adequately followed.

The EU’s current long-term budget includes conditions related to the legislation. The Czech Republic was supposed to have met the conditions by the start of the 2014-20 budget period, but the deadline was extended until the end of 2014, based on a Czech action plan.

The last available deadline is the end of 2015, at which point the Czech Republic would automatically start to lose EU funding, the Commission says.