Government approves first ever anti-discrimination bill
Perhaps surprisingly, the Czech Republic currently has no legislation against discrimination. On Monday the government took a big step towards rectifying that situation when it approved a draft bill which should bring the country into line with the European Union. Dita Asiedu discussed the country's first anti-discrimination legislation with the Czech Republic's Human Right's Commissioner, Jan Jarab:
"It would be one overarching law. The big decision there was that we wouldn't do it through a set of amendments of many laws - somebody said they were up to fifty-five - but that we would do it like the Race Relations Act in Britain, which is the earliest known example of such a large overarching anti-discrimination law - it's from 1967."
Why did it take so long for the government to work on such a law?
"Well, it didn't take that long. It took us a year and a half to prepare it because it is a big piece of legislative work and we have lost about four or five months now because there was resistance. Why there was resistance is because I think it's partly for legal academic reasons, because some older legal academics detest the idea of having specialised laws and they would like to have everything done through amendments to existing laws. This is a perfectly legitimate point in countries where the anti-discrimination legislation is well developed in various fields. But here, in the candidate countries [for EU membership], it doesn't make much sense because we would need to start almost from zero and put it into every single law - law on the police, or on health care and so on. So, it's much easier for us to do it through one law."
So how much of a chance, do you think, does it have to make it through parliament?
"Well, I hope it's one hundred percent now because I cannot imagine parliament turning it down at a moment when we are about to enter the European Union and would really mean failing to carry out what we are obliged to carry out by the European Union and it would mean that the Czech Republic would be heavily penalised. So, I think that this is the decision-making point. Until now, there were still the two options - one of them was a less practical one and would have delayed us - and now after this approval there is only one option and I don't see any way in which parliament could turn it down and say 'well, we don't care about what the EU wants'. Assuming that the other argument, the real need for practical life, would not be so urgent for some of the parliamentarians, then the EU argument should be."
