Senate on Autopilot in 2017 – Is There a Bill They Won’t Pass?

Prague, Dec 29 (CTK) – The Czech Senate discussed 100 bills this year, out of which it rejected six and redrafted 12, allowing a reform of school financing and cancellation of general exceptions from the register of contracts and preventing the adoption of bureaucratic controlling rules.

 

However, it failed to have a milder version of the national park law passed. Some senators then challenged the legislation at the Constitutional Court, to which members of the upper house started turning much more often than in the past years.

 

They proposed the cancellation of the register of contracts and some clauses of the anti-smoking law.

 

The senators helped fill the posts in the Office Supervising the Financial Management of Parties and Movements.

 

However, they did not select any of President Milos Zeman’s candidates to the Council of the Czech Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (USTR). they replaced roughly one-half of its members at the end of the year.

 

Similar to past years, the upper house distanced itself from some statements by Zeman, such as those which related to the recognition of the Russian annexation of Crimea.

 

This year, the successes of the upper house included the fulfilment of the Czech constitution by passing the law on the relation between the two houses of parliament. The approval of the legislation took almost 25 years.

 

Like last year, the Senate ends this year in an incomplete composition. The post of senator for the Trutnov ward is unoccupied because former senator and businessman Jiri Hlavaty (ANO) became a member of the Chamber of Deputies for a short time.

 

The Social Democrats (CSSD) create the strongest group in the 81-member Senate with 25 senators, followed by the Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL) with 16 senators and the Mayors and Independents (STAN) with 11 senators.

 

Then there is the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) with ten senators and ANO with six.

 

The five-member Independent Senators group is comprised of the Citizens Rights Party and the Communists.

 

The remaining seven senators are not in any senators’ group.