The Czech Republic must allow foreigners into political parties

Current legislation allows membership in political parties only to citizens of the Czech Republic. The European Commission sued the Czech Republic and Poland with it. The court has now decided that both countries must also allow all other EU citizens into the party ranks.

“We respect the court’s decision, we need to react to it by changing the legislation. The Ministry of the Interior will try to find a quick legislative way so that the change is ideally adopted during the current election period,” said Hana Malá, spokeswoman for the Ministry of the Interior.

As far as foreigners are concerned, only citizens of EU member states can vote and run for office in the Czech Republic, namely in elections to municipal councils and elections to the European Parliament. In the case of municipal elections, foreigners must reside in the municipality where they want to run. In the case of European elections, you must have a permanent residence permit or a certificate of temporary residence in the Czech Republic.

In all these cases, however, they can only run as non-party members – and that is exactly what the Commission criticizes. Since the topic concerns only EU citizens, it does not apply in any way to Ukrainians, of whom there are 578,000 in the Czech Republic according to the latest yearbook of the Ministry of the Interior, of which approximately 384,000 are refugees with temporary protection.

In this case, the European Commission is interested in EU citizens. Already in 2010, it pointed out that Czech law may conflict with binding EU treaties. According to them, all EU citizens must have the same right to vote and be elected in municipal and European Parliament elections.

According to the Commission, being a party member can provide the candidate with significant advantages, be it access to finance or media attention. According to the Commission, if the Czech Republic denies foreigners from the EU this possibility, it violates their rights. The Czech Republic contradicted this opinion, the Commission therefore sued the Czech Republic, and on November 19 the Court of Justice of the EU decided that the Czech Republic really violates the rights of foreigners from the EU.

Although the problem preoccupies Czech and EU lawyers, it only marginally troubles the parties themselves. The news addressed all parliamentary parties and movements and lists all the answers that came from the party apparatuses.

“In the past, we encountered a few rare cases,” said TOP 09 spokeswoman Markéta Volfová when asked if foreigners from the EU wanted to join the party, but could not due to Czech laws.

“According to our records, we have dealt with such a case only once, when a citizen of the Slovak Republic wanted to become a party member, which is not possible according to the law on association in political parties and political movements,” said Iva Petrusová, spokeswoman for the KDU-ČSL.

“Recently, we have not come across a case where a citizen of the European Union with permanent residence in the Czech Republic, but without Czech citizenship, would seek membership in our party,” said Jakub Skyva, spokesman for the ODS. “However, we welcome the court’s decision as an important step towards protecting the rights of EU citizens,” he added. The STAN movement has not yet had such a case, spokeswoman Sára Beránková said.

As it was said, the candidacy of non-partisan foreigners in municipal and European elections is already possible today. The country remembers the case when a foreigner and non-party member was elected to the European Parliament for the Czech Republic. In 2004, German citizen Daniel Strož became a Czech MEP. A native of Pilsen, he immigrated to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1968. Due to his literary activities in exile, the communist regime stripped him of his Czechoslovak citizenship in 1981.

On the basis of family origin, he was subsequently granted German citizenship. In 2004, Strož was paradoxically elected to the EP for the KSČM.

The opposite case, that is, a Czech politician running for the European Parliament elsewhere in the Union, could occur in this year’s European elections. Former Member of the European Parliament for ANO Martina Dlabajová received an offer from Italy from the LibDem Europei party there to lead a candidate in the northeast of the country in the June elections to the European Parliament. Dlabajová used to live and do business in Italy, but in the end she turned down the offer, saying that she wanted to work in the Czech Republic.