Will the new interior minister continue the illegal steps of his predecessor?

The Ministry of the Interior and the Police of the Czech Republic are not ordinary authorities. They are the institutions that are supposed to promote, protect and watch over the observance of the rule of law. They are supposed to be the guarantor of the rule of law. If there is a suspicion that legality is not consistently respected, but formalistically circumvented or purposefully interpreted, it is not a common administrative problem. This is a matter of constitutional order.

Review authority according to § 193 of Act No. 361/2003 Coll. is not just an internal procedure. It is an extraordinary corrective against illegal final decisions in official matters. It is supposed to protect members of the security forces from possible arbitrariness. If the institute becomes just a formal "no contravention found" response without specifically and verifiably addressing the objections, it becomes empty of meaning.

Article 36(1) of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms guarantees the right to a fair trial. That doesn't just mean being able to make a submission. It means the right to a real, substantive and reviewable settlement of arguments. When evidence is offered and not made or specifically rejected with reason, the principle of reviewability is violated. If a full review of the file is not allowed before a decision is made, the equality of arms is weakened. If the official communication contains speculative evaluative judgments about the subjective state of the participant, the principle of impartiality and the prohibition of arbitrariness are violated.

That's not a detail. This is a possible violation of constitutionally guaranteed procedural rights.

The principle of legality, enshrined in Article 2, paragraphs 2 and 3 of the Constitution, requires public authorities to act only within the limits of the law. The Ministry of the Interior and the Police of the Czech Republic should not only respect this principle, but actively defend it. If the review mechanism were to be reduced to a formality, it would mean that the state created the appearance of control without real content. And a state that creates the appearance of legality instead of actually fulfilling it weakens its own legitimacy.

The previous management of the department was repeatedly criticized for the fact that the review in service matters lacked visible material depth. If the objections regarding the lack of evidence, limited access to the file and selective evaluation of expert documents appear repeatedly, they are no longer individual excesses. This could be a systemic pattern. And a systemic problem requires a systemic response.

The current Minister of the Interior faces a clear test. It will either confirm the continuity of a practice that raises doubts about respect for constitutional procedural guarantees, or it will open the question of the quality of the review procedures and carry out a real review of them. There is no third option.

Institutions that have the right to enforce the law on citizens must themselves be held to the strictest standard of legality. The police can interfere with basic rights, limit freedom, enter privacy. The Ministry of the Interior manages the security architecture of the state. If there was a distortion, transgression or circumvention of legal norms, it would be a fatal paradox: those who are supposed to protect the law would themselves relativize it.

The principle of protection of constitutional law means that procedural guarantees are not an obstacle to efficiency, but a condition for it. If the review procedure is exhausted, the protection of rights moves exclusively to the judicial level. This is costly, time-consuming and indicative of a failure of internal control mechanisms.

So the question is not whether the new minister will "follow up" on his predecessor. The question is whether he will be willing to review whether his department is really acting in the spirit of the Constitution or just within the confines of administrative minimalism. If he wants to restore trust in the exercise of state power, he must be ready to say: legality is not a formality, but an obligation.

The state can demand obedience to the law only if it itself observes it to the letter. The Ministry of the Interior and the Police of the Czech Republic cannot be institutions that interpret the law purposefully according to the needs of the moment. They must be institutions that respect him even when it is inconvenient.

The rule of law does not begin in the courts. It starts with every official decision. And it is here that the decision is now made whether the law will be above the state - or the state above the law.

Source:

1. Act No. 361/2003 Coll., on the employment relationship of members of the security forces. Available from:https://www.zakonyprolidi.cz/cs/2003-361

2. Review of the decision according to the law on the service relationship of members of the security forces: ftp diploma thesis. Charles University, Faculty of Law, Prague. Available from:https://dspace.cuni.cz/bitstream/handle/20.500.11956/187421/120441539.pdf?isAllowed=y&sequence=1(cit. 2026-03-05)

3. Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic (MV),Report on the analysis of decision-making practice and jurisprudence in matters of the service relationship of members of the security forces, MV, 2016. Available from:https://mv.gov.cz/sluzba/soubor/proak-ka06-zprava-z-analyzy-rozhodovaci-praxe-a-judikatury-pdf.aspx(cit. 2026-03-05)

4. Nesiba, J., Kolář, O. & Smolík, J., 2024.Codes of ethics in a contextual comparative analysis of the security forces of the Czech Republic. Political Science, [online] 27(4), pp.68–93. ISSN 1335-2741. Available from:https://doi.org/10.24040/politickevedy.2024.27.4.68-93

5. Ombudsman (Public Defender of Rights),Annual Report on Activities 2014, Brno: Office of the Public Defender of Rights, 2014. Available from:https://www.ochrance.cz/en/dokument/2014/Annual_2014.pdf