<Hospodářská komora: Stavební zákon bude vyhovovat jen úředníkům> <Economic Chamber: The Construction Law Will Only Satisfy Officials>

Prague - The new building law, which will be discussed by the government's legislative council on Thursday, will only benefit bureaucrats. The acceleration of the building approval process, which is its main proclaimed goal, will not be achieved, claims the Czech Chamber of Commerce (HK) which informed ČTK about it today. The Ministry for Regional Development (MMR), which originally prepared the law in cooperation with the chamber, has made many concessions to municipalities and offices, HK further stated. According to MMR, the Chamber of Commerce is merely repeating itself and its claims are also not true.

"Building approvals will once again end without the necessary reform. The recodification of building law requires adjustments in the organization of state administration, land use planning, requirements for construction, the process itself, and judicial review. According to the original concept, a unified and independent state building administration was to be established, designed after the model of functional cadastral offices. A Supreme Building Office and a system of local building offices were to be created,” stated the president of the Chamber of Commerce Vladimír Dlouhý.

Instead, he claims, MMR has made a fatal number of concessions to municipalities and sectors, creating a hybrid system of municipal and state building offices with unclear relationships and jurisdictions. “How many of these offices there will ultimately be is also not currently certain, as that will only be revealed after the issuance of a decree by the Ministry of the Interior. This will lead to the fragmentation of general building offices, specialized building offices, and other building offices into a similar state as exists today,” added Dlouhý.

Minister for Regional Development Klára Dostálová (for ANO) agreed at the beginning of January with the head of the Association of Towns and Municipalities František Lukl on adjusting the then form of the law. According to the revised version, officials responsible for building approval at the municipal level will not be transferred to the new state model. Originally, 13,500 officials were to come under the state; now it will be about 7,000. The law thus retains building offices at the municipal level. However, decisions should be made by county offices and the central office managed by the state. Issues related to linear and large public benefit constructions should be addressed directly at the state level.

"We do not understand why the law should only benefit bureaucrats. The acceleration of building approvals will instead impose increased demands on them and will be beneficial primarily for builders. The essence of the law is to eliminate departmentalism, whereby many ministries gave up their competencies. The essence is that building permits will be granted by a building office and not dozens of affected bodies, as is the case today,” communicated MMR spokesperson Vilém Frček to ČTK.

"The law has grown to twice the size compared to the version from last November and has even over 100 more paragraphs than the currently valid law. New rules and regulations have been added that were not professionally or practically consulted with anyone. On the contrary, the very establishment and enforceability of deadlines is miserable. Consequently, a builder cannot expect an acceleration of the proceedings or an increase in legal certainty and improvement of their position in the proceedings,” Dlouhý continued.

According to MMR, there is no proportionality in the idea that fewer paragraphs means faster building approvals. "If there were, we could stuff the law into, say, ten paragraphs. Each of them would probably have a hundred subsections and letters of the entire alphabet. While no one would understand it, we could proudly proclaim to the world that MMR has lightened the law by hundreds of paragraphs. We received over 5,000 comments on the original version of the law, many of which were aimed precisely at the clarity of the law,” added Frček.

The law is to be discussed by the government during summer, and in September it should go to the Chamber of Deputies. It is expected to come into effect in spring 2021, with its effectiveness gradually starting by mid-2023. According to a government analysis, the Czech economy loses 7.1 billion crowns annually due to slow building approvals.