Documents and Laws in Parliament

The amendment narrows the circle of cities that can issue their own building regulations to the capital city of Prague only. The amendment changes the existing extension to Brno, Ostrava and regional cities back to a single municipality with this power. The aim is to reduce the fragmentation of building law and increase legal certainty and predictability in the permitting process.

The amendment facilitates the permitting of strategic energy structures by explicitly allowing them even in undevelopable areas and stipulating that they are considered to be in keeping with the character of the area. It also changes the rule in the Energy Act so that power generation facilities for energy security are not required to be consistent with land-use planning documentation to the current extent. The proposal emphasizes the importance of these structures to the state’s energy security, supply stability, and transmission system while maintaining environmental and public health impact assessments. At the same time, the terminology is changed from ‘undeveloped’ to ‘undevelopable’ in the following text.

The amendment specifies that a strategic investment building may be designated as a public utility building under the Building Act in the spatial planning documentation. It also abolishes the restriction according to which expropriation of rights to land and buildings was possible only for the benefit of the state or a wholly state-owned legal entity. The aim is to unify the regime of strategic investment constructions without distinction between state and private investors and to clarify the relation to the Construction Law and the Law on Accelerating Construction.

The amendment abolishes the newly proposed Section 144c of the Building Act, which was intended to introduce a separate institute of “housing comfort”. The drafters argue that the protection of housing quality and neighbourly rights is already sufficiently ensured by other rules and that this vague concept would increase interpretive uncertainty, the number of objections and litigation. The amendment is intended to make the law clearer and to make building permits quicker, more predictable, according to the proposal.

The amendment modifies the Building Act so that selected reserved buildings may exceptionally deviate from the planning documentation even before its formal amendment. This is only possible with the consent of the authority that issued the documentation, or the land owner, and while protecting public interests, the rights of other persons, protection zones and corridors. In the case of reserved buildings in a built-up area, it is now stipulated that if a planning agreement is concluded and the investor undertakes to ensure that the documentation is amended and to pay the costs, such a project is deemed not to be detrimental to the public interest.

The amendment amends the Building Act so that it is possible to deviate from the planning documentation with the consent of the competent authority and the owner of the land, provided that this does not affect public interests or the rights of other persons. It explicitly states that residential construction in areas designated for production and storage is deemed not to threaten public interests, which is intended to facilitate the conversion of brownfield sites into housing. In doing so, the proposal is aimed at speeding up the permitting of developments and promoting more affordable housing without the need to amend the zoning plan.

The amendment modifies the Building Act to explicitly add economic and industrial development to the protected public interests. At the same time, it extends the time limits for trial operation and early use of buildings: the basic period is changed from 1 to 3 years and the maximum extension from 3 to 5 years. The aim is to facilitate the implementation of technically demanding industrial and logistics projects and to strengthen the investment environment.

The amendment simplifies the authorisation of small domestic sewage treatment plants up to 50 equivalent inhabitants, provided that CE-marked products are their main component. These plants are now considered to be authorised to handle water already by the legal force of the building permit, so that a separate water permit is no longer required. It also introduces mandatory technical inspections within 6 months of commissioning and every 2 years thereafter, including the obligation to rectify defects and new penalties for breach of these obligations. The crossed out sections show the transfer of some powers from the water authority to the building authority and a new separate definition of the obligations for overflow or discharge.

The amendment modifies the Water Act mainly to improve flood protection and clarify procedures for managing river basins and floodplains. It explicitly sets out the public interest in flood protection structures, extends the rules for the removal and spontaneous demise of water works and updates the work with flood hazard maps and floodplains. It also includes partial competence and technical changes to simplify practice and increase legal certainty.

The amendment extends the scope of reserved structures under the Building Act to include hazardous waste incinerators. At the same time, it includes them among the structures in the special regime of accelerated construction if they are also used for waste arising in connection with energy infrastructure. The aim is to expedite the permitting of these facilities due to the lack of capacity in the country and to strengthen the waste and energy security of the country.

The amendment introduces into the Water Act the new institution of a system of domestic wastewater treatment plants and sets out rules for their ownership and operation. It requires a professionally qualified person, regulates the possibility of entering other people’s land for inspection, maintenance or repairs and reflects this institution in the competence of administrative authorities. At the same time, it adds offences and penalties for unqualified operation and for infringements of the obligation to trespass.

The amendment extends the range of persons who can claim financial compensation for damage caused by restrictions under the Nature Conservation Act. The new entitlement also explicitly covers tenants, subtenants and users of land blocks registered in the LPIS, with the landowner having priority in the event of concurrent claims. The proposal also clarifies that the entitlement continues even if the relevant rights are transferred or transferred and replaces the narrower existing wording with the general term ’entitled'.

The amendment modifies the Water Act in the area of continuous wastewater monitoring and emergency plans. In particular, it postpones the applicability of mandatory continuous monitoring and related penalties until 1 July 2027, extends exemptions for certain industrial facilities and extends the deadline for entering emergency plans into the ISPOP system from 2 to 4 years. At the same time, it introduces the obligation to make monitoring results available to inspection authorities on request, but exempts such data from disclosure under information laws, and protects data on facilities important for national defence.

The amendment introduces a special regime for energy security structures and for the Děčín navigation stage, including the hydroelectric power plant. Water permits and exemptions are to be dealt with directly in the construction procedure on the basis of a binding opinion from the regional authority in order to reduce separate procedures and speed up the permitting process. At the same time, the existing regulation is changed so that ordinary construction projects are to have only a water permit, while a binding opinion is required for selected strategic constructions. The proposal also adds the Prelouč navigation stage as a strategic infrastructure for water transport.

The amendment adds a landscape register to the amendment to the Nature Protection Act and extends the registration in the register of territorial identification to include registered significant landscape features. It obliges municipalities and regions to submit decisions and documentation on significant landscape elements, nature parks and temporarily protected areas, including older cases, to the landscape register by the end of 2027. The amendment is intended to improve digitisation, the availability of map information on restrictions in the area and thus speed up permitting processes. The crossed-out parts show modifications and clarifications of the competences of nature protection authorities and terminology, for example, the replacement of built-up area with developable area.

The amendment adds to the Nature and Landscape Protection Act rules for preventing damage and informing about risks on hiking trails, especially in national parks and other protected areas. Landowners are to protect nature, ensure the passability of designated paths and hiking routes and warn visitors of dangers on risky sections. At the same time, the terminology in the provision in question is changed from ‘built-up’ to ‘developable’ area.

The amendment extends the special regime for the revalidation of EIA opinions to special railways, typically the metro. At the same time, it explicitly states that for these constructions, the validity for the next extension is based on 31 December 2026 and the application can be submitted no later than this date. The aim is to remove interpretative ambiguities, preserve legal certainty for investors and facilitate the authorisation of major transport infrastructure.

The amendment cancels the changes that were intended to exclude the designation of a mining area from the EIA regime and from the list of follow-up procedures. The aim is to maintain the mandatory environmental impact assessment prior to the decision on the extraction area, as according to the drafters’ proposal this would be contrary to EU law and Czech case law. The proposal stresses that without EIA, public participation would be weakened and the risk of annulment of decisions and of the Czech Republic being sanctioned for violation of EU law would increase.

The amendment aims at greater transparency and professional independence in the newly centralised construction administration. It introduces a publicly accessible timetable for the work of the Office of Territorial Development for the allocation of cases and mandates that expert assessments under other legislation are carried out by qualified officials without instructions from unqualified supervisors. At the same time, the result of this assessment shall be entered in the record of construction procedures. The crossed-out text shows the modification and refinement of the original proposal, in particular the addition of rules on the work schedule and on the recording of professional conclusions.

The amendment adds to the Building Act an explicit reference to climate change adaptation measures as a public interest. It introduces a new definition of adaptation measures and examples of such measures, such as green and blue infrastructure, vegetated roofs, planting of greenery, retention elements or flood protection measures. At the same time, it changes the purpose of the law and the aims and objectives of spatial planning so that municipalities, regions and authorities must take adaptation of land and buildings into account when making decisions. Compared to the original text, this explicitly extends the emphasis from housing, work and business to climate resilience of the territory.