Czech Justice Ministry fails to prepare verification system for "child certificates" ahead of January deadline

Starting January 1, a new Czech law is supposed to take effect requiring all organisations working with children — from Scout groups to sports clubs — to check so-called child certificates (documents confirming staff over the age of 15 have no criminal record for crimes against children). However, the state has still not built the promised electronic system for mass verification of these documents, warns Aleš Sedláček, chairman of the Czech Council of Children and Youth.

"It's technically impossible to start requiring these certificates from January 1. Organisations need six months to get the system running — to collect certificates from people, keep records, store the data, and set up data exchange with the registry. But the state still hasn't been able to explain how this is supposed to work," Sedláček complained.

The problem is especially acute for large organisations such as Junák — Czech Scouts, which has tens of thousands of members, including volunteers. There's an added complication: for staff at children's summer camps and sports training camps, the certificate must be renewed at least once every three months — meaning organisers will have to check its validity several times a year.

According to Barbora Lukačevič Trojan, spokesperson for the Czech Scouts, the organisation has nearly 14,000 volunteers working with children, and requiring them to submit documents every three months is, from a practical standpoint, absurd. "We would be very grateful if the technical solution didn't shift the burden onto the volunteers themselves, who work with children in their free time," she noted.

The Ministry of Justice, which is responsible for building the system, acknowledges the delay. According to ministry spokesman Vladimír Řepka, work on the electronic system is underway, but has been slowed down partly by flaws in the law itself — for instance, it fails to provide for any transition period.

The plan is for volunteers to submit their certificate to an organisation only once, while simultaneously granting that organisation the right to receive notifications about any changes from a special registry via the new system. "If there's a change in the registry regarding someone who has already submitted a certificate, the organisation will get a notification and request an updated document," Řepka explained. For the system to work fully, it also needs to be linked to the Register of Representation — a task handled by the Digital and Information Agency.

Simplifying the procedure will likely require amending the law itself — representatives of the relevant government bodies were supposed to discuss this back in summer. That's why members of the Chamber of Deputies' subcommittee on domestic and sexual violence are proposing to postpone the law's entry into force. As confirmed by Deputy Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Barbora Urbanová (STAN), organisations are hoping for a six-month delay — until July 1, 2027. However, no formal amendment to that effect has yet been submitted to parliament.

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Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz