Bakala failed with the complaint regarding the house for Havel's library

Brno - The Constitutional Court (ÚS) rejected the complaint of entrepreneur Zdeněk Bakala in a long-standing dispute related to the reconstruction of a building for the Václav Havel Library at Loretánské Square in Prague. The complaint was directed against the rulings whereby the Municipal Court in Prague first annulled part of the zoning plan last year and then, in March of this year, ordered the municipality to reopen the proceedings on the building's location. The reconstruction of the historical building in Hradčany has been postponed for several years. The Václav Havel Library is currently located on Ostrovní Street in the New Town.

The ÚS found no violation of Bakala's fundamental rights in the judicial decision-making, as stated in the published resolution of the senate with the rapporteur Vojtěch Šimíček.

Bakala is the owner of the building. He purchased it with the declared intention of establishing the seat of Havel's library. However, the project has encountered significant delays, also due to disputes with the tenant Bohumil Vejtasa, who filed a lawsuit against the zoning decision regarding the extension and conversion of the historical building into a multifunctional object.

The Municipal Court already agreed to the lawsuit in August 2016 and returned the case to the municipality for further proceedings. Subsequently, the Supreme Administrative Court (NSS) ordered the municipal court to reconsider the lawsuit based on a cassation complaint.

Even after that, however, the Prague court ruled in favor of Vejtasa. Initially, it excluded a proposal to annul the amendment of the guideline part of the zoning plan for separate consideration and suspended the proceedings on the lawsuit. It then actually annulled the amendment that reduced the numerically expressed minimum share of housing in the area. The reason was that the share of housing should not be included in the guideline but in the binding part of the zoning plan. The court also had reservations about the implementation of the change.

"Its amendment should not have been carried out under the amendment of the zoning plan, as occurred, but it should have followed the process established for issuing measures of general nature," ruled the municipal court, whose opinion has also been confirmed by the NSS.

"It is evident that the measure of general nature was adopted in a completely flawed manner and through illegal procedures. The contested measure of general nature was marred by such serious procedural defects that fully justify the conclusion of the municipal court about the necessity to annul it from the very beginning of its validity," stated the NSS.

Then the municipal court upheld Vejtasa's lawsuit and sent the case back to the municipality for further proceedings. It emphasized that if the measure of general nature lost its validity, the basis for the issuance of the zoning decision ceased to exist.

According to earlier statements by Bakala, the library was to occupy about one-third of the building after reconstruction. The project was prepared by Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill and Czech architectural firm TaK. The new owners of the building successfully negotiated with the tenants for evacuation years ago. Vejtasa was the only one who refused at that time.