Justice ministry prepares procedural law recodification

Following the recodification of the civil and commercial codes, the time has now come for civil procedure. The currently valid Civil Procedure Code dates back to 1963, and, understandably, has been extensively amended since. An expert working group has now come up with a concept for a new regulation. The new code will mainly focus on contentious proceedings, while non-contentious proceedings will remain separately regulated in the Act on Special Court Proceedings from 2013.

Highly innovative is the planned involvement of the public in the preparation of the wording of the bill – the 293-page concept will be available for comments on at http://crs.justice.cz, a website created for this purpose.

To unify civil proceedings, the concept takes three main principles as its basis. First, civil procedure’s dispositive principle, meaning that proceedings rest on the parties’ initiative, should be strictly observed, as should be the accusatorial principle. More emphasis should be placed on procedural economy, denoting correct, swift and at the same time the least costly proceedings. The amendment therefore e.g. proposes to shorten the deadlines for filing for appellate reviews, which should also become a regular remedy, meaning that judgements would only enter into force after a decision by the Supreme Court (if any).

The minister plans to finalise the wording of individual sections of the bill within the present term of office. We can but hope that he will manage to harmonise the seemingly opposing changes in the concept of appellate review with the mentioned economic efficiency of proceedings.