Czech Justice Minister Accuses Constitutional Court of Overstepping Its Authority in Pavel–Government Dispute

Czech Justice Minister Jan Tejc has sharply criticized the Constitutional Court, which — just two days after a competence dispute was filed — issued a preliminary ruling in the standoff between the president and the government, obliging the head of state to attend the summit.

According to the minister, the court violated the principle of a fair trial, since the reporting judge, Pavel Šámal, failed to forward the president's petition to either the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the government — both parties to the proceedings. This, Tejc argued, directly contradicts the Act on the Constitutional Court, which requires that a petition be delivered immediately to the parties, along with a deadline for response. Šámal merely asked the government to justify its decision, without attaching the text of the petition itself.

The minister also questioned the legitimacy of applying the Civil Procedure Code in this competence dispute, noting that, in his view, the Act on the Constitutional Court does not provide for preliminary measures in such cases at all, unlike in other types of proceedings.

Even granting the possibility of such a measure, Tejc stressed, a preliminary ruling should only be used to prevent extremely serious consequences, the threat of violence, or imminent, irreversible harm. In his view, a situation in which the president simply skipped a single summit does not rise to that level of threat — unlike, say, a hypothetical complete removal of the president from office or a ban on his foreign travel.

What angered the minister most was that the court, in effect, predetermined the outcome of the dispute itself, even though it formally stated that a ruling on the merits was still to come. By obliging the president to attend the summit, the court effectively granted the demand at the heart of the lawsuit — even though the Constitutional Court's own established practice insists that preliminary measures are temporary in nature and must not anticipate the final ruling. According to Tejc, the court had previously used exactly this argument to reject similar petitions from other applicants.

Tejc believes this also breached the principle of judicial restraint — the court intervened in political processes and may have undermined legal predictability. At the same time, the minister stressed that the government, despite its disagreement, will respect and comply with the court's ruling, and that it would be a serious mistake to challenge its binding force or look for loopholes to evade it.

Commenting on the sharp remarks of Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Petr Macinka (Motoristé), who called the situation a "constitutional coup," Tejc noted that the word "putsch" has often been used before as an emotionally charged political statement, and that the atmosphere surrounding the conflict has indeed been heated — not least thanks to the media's role in stoking it.

Tejc also pointed out that justice ministers usually avoid publicly criticizing the Constitutional Court, suggesting that his predecessors may simply have lacked the courage to voice such objections openly, wary of the reaction of judges with whom they must deal in the course of their duties.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz