17th February 2014

The Bill on Contracts Publication under criticism by the Union of Towns and Municipalities

The Union of Towns and Municipalities of the Czech Republic (Svaz měst a obcí České republiky, SMO) criticized the Bill on Contract Records (návrh zákona o uveřejňování smluv). The Bill regulates any public procurement and stipulates rules under which a public contract is efficient (it should be publicized, otherwise the contract is invalid). The Union claims that there are several aspects of the Bill that are unclear. Firstly, the Union rejects the provision that the contract should be valid after publication. The Union claims that it may depend on the will of the record provider when the contract is publicized. Secondly, the Union raises the question of administrative burden and asks for duty to publicize only contracts above 50,000 CZK. Thirdly, the Union disapproves that municipalities should care for scanning the contracts using OCR methods (optical character recognition) (one should be able to search the contract).

On the contrary, proponents of the Bill claim that criticism is not relevant. There would be the administrative burden in case that the municipalities should assess which contract to publicize.

The Bill was proposed mainly by deputies of TOP09 who are mayors at the same time.

The Bill is heading to Committee of the Chamber of Deputies (Committee on Budgetary Control, Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs, Committee on Economic Affairs, Committee on Public Administration and Regional Development); the Committees should discuss the Bill on 26 and 27 February.

For further information, click here and here.

Members of the American Chamber of Commerce in the Czech Republic