The Constitutional Court has already been without a judge for seven months and it threatens to get worse. Next year, the mandate of the other seven | iRADIO
The Brno Constitutional Court is not complete even after more than half a year. One place remains vacant there – only fourteen of the fifteen judges are working. The new reinforcement is to be proposed by the president and approved by the Senate. However, Miloš Zeman has not yet sent any other proposal to the upper house of the parliament.
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The Constitutional Court is managing its work so far, even if it is missing one judge, but it will not be without possible snags.
“It makes it difficult for him to make decisions in the plenary session, for example. When all the judges vote, there can be a tie,” says President of the Constitutional Court Pavel Rychetský.
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“These are not pleasant situations because what matters is the truth. That means making decisions. But with an even number, it can really happen,” Rychetský explains the problem of insufficient number of judges.
The Constitutional Court deals with about 4,500 constitutional complaints every year, and currently has almost 800 active cases.
Currently, the court takes an average of 87 days to resolve one case. “When the set of judges was complete, the duration of the proceedings was four days shorter,” describes Rychetský.
“For the time being, even in the fourteen cases, we somehow manage to manage the agenda without any negative impact, both on the length of the proceedings and on the number of processed cases. If such a situation were to last another year, two years, I think it would not be bearable,” adds the president of the Constitutional Court.
It depends on the president
When the Constitutional Court gets new reinforcements, it depends on the president. Miloš Zeman must propose a name to the Senate, and the upper chamber then approves or rejects the candidate.
So far, however, according to the senate website, no other nominations have come from the Castle, and the presidential office does not respond to inquiries. Constitutional lawyer Jan Kudrna thinks that Miloš Zeman will not have an easy time promoting his candidates in the Senate.
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“There is, I would say, quite a lot of tension between the Senate and the President of the Republic, so the situation is objectively quite complicated from a political point of view. The President of the Republic is undoubtedly having a hard time, because I think that finding a candidate who would pass the Senate in this rather heated situation can be difficult,” says Kudrna.
At the end of March, the President nominated the Brno lawyer Petr Poledník as the new constitutional judge. But the majority of senators rejected it in May. They were annoyed by his lack of activity in the courts or his publishing activity, which was mainly devoted to the history of advocacy.
Not for the first time, not for the last time?
The Czech Republic already has experience with a fully vacant constitutional court. According to Rychetský, there were only nine judges under ex-president Václav Klaus. At that time, the senators rejected Klaus’ proposals for new reinforcements and did not give him the nod for a total of eight names.
If we compare it with the other Czech presidents, Václav Havel unsuccessfully proposed two candidates, Miloš Zeman so far five.
According to lawyer Kudrna, the Constitution does not set a maximum deadline by which the president must choose a new constitutional judge.
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The current vacancy was left by Judge Kateřina Šimáčková, who left for the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg last December.
However, there is a risk that next year there will be even more vacant seats on the Constitutional Court – the ten-year mandate of seven judges, including the chairman, ends.
The President of the Constitutional Court, Pavel Rychetský, will not accept the nomination again. But he would like it if all the constitutional judges did not leave and repeat their mandate.
“Of course, we don’t know who will be the president of the republic at that time. Until then, both the functions of the head of state will change and the senate will change by a third. But I think that it should be remembered that there is a real danger to the constitutional court and to the functioning of not only the constitution, but also human rights and freedoms in this country, if the constitutional court is not supplemented in time,” concludes Rychetský.
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