Challenges of the Implementation of the European Charter of Local Self-Government in Czech Legislation

Abstract

In their recent rigorous analysis of the European Charter of Local Self-Government (Radvan, Mrkývka, Schweigl 2018), the authors elaborated the manner in which the Charter has been implemented into the Czech legal order. In this paper, the authors extended the previous analysis by focusing on the challenges connected with the incorporation of the Charta´s principles into the Czech legal order. They outlined the areas, in which the incorporation seems to be properly done, and pointed to a few areas which might be viewed as problematic, as for incorporating of the Charta´s principles. One of the most significant problems is that the distinction between the state-administration and self-administration was not carried out in a strict manner and this improper distinction may lead to enhanced conflicts of interest. Some problems might also be detected in the area of how a smaller municipality´s citizens may influence the policy of a larger municipality which provides state-administration for the residents of smaller municipalities.