Prague, April 9 (CTK) – The Czech Republic fell behind in the transposition of EU directives as 17 of them were not incorporated in its national legislation according to an assessment made in October 2017.
The Czech Republic is rather slow in transposing the directives, occupying the 21st position among European Union member states.
Justice Minister Robert Pelikan said the main reason for the failure to transpose a number of EU directives is that the Chamber of Deputies sometimes postpones the passage of bills incorporating the directives into Czech law.
The parliaments in Austria or Germany deal with the bills in one or two months, while in the Czech Republic this process takes one or two years, Pelikan recently told the Senate.
He said the government asked the Chamber of Deputies to reserve a special time for discussing EU directives, but the Chamber has not met this request so far.
Pelikan said the government promoted deadlines for the transposition of EU directives and regulations into the national legislation that would be long enough.
Senate EU affairs committee head Vaclav Hampl praised the government for its effort to reduce gold-plating, or cases when Czech ministries try to introduce stricter rules in the law than the EU requires. “It often means that we make the EU responsible for issues that are not popular in the country for some reason,” Hampl said.
The legal standards that have not been passed in the Czech Republic include the laws on roads, on financial control in the civil service and on international judicial cooperation in criminal affairs. The Senate is yet to deal with an amendment to the tax rules that would authorise tax bodies to receive data to fight money laundering.
The Czech Republic pledged to push the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) through its parliament in May. The parliament is also to deal with bills on the residence of foreigners, on medicines and on distribution of insurance.