Úvodník (č. 2/2024)

EDITORIAL
Dear Readers,
You are holding a brand new and in a way remarkable monothematic issue of our Czech Environmental Law Review. For the second time it is entirely dedicated to the topic of spatial planning and construction permitting procedures with a scope overreaching protection of environment and its branches. It follows our first monothematic issue having the same topic published in 2021 (No. 62).
We were no longer motivated to create this issue as a reaction to the adoption of the new Building Act No. 283/2021, as much as to highlight its subsequent amendments and its gradual entry into force throughout 2024.
Czech Environmental Law Society took an active part in the events surrounding the new Building Act, especially through its participation in the project ‚Changing the climate in legislation for our municipalities and cities‘, which has been under the patronage of and coordinated by the association of environmental NGOs Zelený kruh (director Mgr. Petra Kolínská) over the past five years.
Since, at the time of writing this editorial, I am familiar with titles of individual contributions but not with their content, I am somewhat compelled to improvise and limit myself to reactions and observations on the topic.
The main political reason in favor of recodification of Czech construction law was the fact, often emphasized in media, that the Czech Republic is at the bottom of the table dealing with average time required to issue a building permit. This allegedly made impossible to achieve economic prosperity and overall well- being. This was to be fixed in three ways.
The first one was speeding up of and interlinking (as well as simplifying) the various procedures that follow. In this respect, the new Building Act introduces only one truly crucial step that is the merge of spatial planning and construction permitting procedures into a single procedure for the authorization of a project. This step could help to some extent, as one administrative procedure should be faster than two. However, a linguistic question comes to my mind on what will replace the commonly known ‚Building permitted‘ sign placed on the gate or fence of the respective building – probably ‚Project permitted‘. However, that sounds very strange in terms of language and content.
I am not even sure whether a new Building Act (more than 300 sections long, compared to its predecessors having half the number of provisions) can really simplify things. Maybe, direct proportionality should apply in this case instead of indirect proportionality (the briefer the act – the more functional)?!
The second way was greater professionalization of public service. However, construction administration remains a delegated competence and stays in hands of construction authorities in municipalities and regions. Finding better and more motivated officers will probably not be easy, as university-educated construction experts, technicians and lawyers are paid several times more in other sectors, especially in the private one. Moreover, any increase in their salaries would certainly be met with strong opposition from other categories of public service employees, who consider themselves to be equally important and educated. In addition, a large proportion of public service employees in construction authorities is already at or close to retirement age, and therefore the motivation to learn new skills is certainly very low.
The third way represents the perfectly managed digitalization of the permitting (previously spatial planning and construction permitting) procedure. At the time of writing of this editorial (the memorable date of November 17, 2024), this has not taken place yet and at the same time it seems that someone has ‚switched off‘ the old IT system that served as platform for proceedings under the old Building Act, the restart of which will probably require another amendment to the Building Act. The digital darkness reigns, so to speak. The political and personal changes in the leadership of the Ministry of Regional Development performed by the government are well known.
The ‚bypasses‘ created by the so-called Line Act or the Single Environmental Statement (SES) Act may provide some relief. However, neither of these laws is without flaws from theoretical as well as practical point of view. The ‚outsourcing‘ of the most important water, transport, energy and digital constructions to special authorities and under a special fast-track regime may lead to faster achieving of economic objectives, but environmental interests and, where appropriate, social interests, will be drastically suppressed and diminished. As far as Single Environmental Statement is concerned, it brings only partial procedural integration and only in the area of environmental protection, apart from the fact that this is probably the first time when the word ‚environmental‘ has been officially used in Czech legislation in such a massive way. Protected nature conservation areas and NATURA 2000 sites are exempted from application of the said instrument, while the regimes of heritage conservation, the integrated rescue system and many others are completely out of scope. Thus, only selected agendas of the Ministry of the Environment are included, while other ministries have obviously succeeded in preserving their autonomous positions.
Since we currently dispose of very few arguments that are fact-based, impressions lead to the conclusion that ‚we tried our best, but it turned out as usual‘. We have to wait several years during which the new Building Act will be in effect in order to be able to fully assess whether and what changes have been achieved at all. For the time being, I remain rather skeptical, but I would be happy to be proven wrong.
To sum up, the focus of this issue does not limit itself to the new Building Act, but also deals with intertemporality of permitting regimes and covers Single Environmental Statement Act and related new legislation.
This issue of our magazine would also like to stimulate discussion on the necessity of legislative changes (past and future). New Building Act certainly raises theoretical legal questions, for it fails to deliver coherent and foolproof provisions (unclear and unmemorable terms, provisions on competences in the beginning of the text – even before substantive law, etc.).
Finally, I would like to thank all the contributors to this issue, which I see as reminiscence of the successfully completed project ‚Changing the Climate‘.
I wish all readers an interesting, inspiring and sometimes perhaps even provocative reading.