THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC´S JUDICIARY UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF ITS INTEGRATION INTO THE EUROPEAN UNION AND THE DOMESTIC APPLICATION OF THE EU LAW BY CZECH COURTS

Abstract

Abstract:The Czech Republic has become one of the new EU Member States in May of the year 2004. Consequently, the EU Law has become the integral part of the Czech Republic´s legal order. Since then, all the state authorities have its obligation to comply with the European Union law and apply it duly within its daily activity. The important role is played at this respect undoubtedly by national courts solving the conflicts of everyday life. Actually, the Czech Republic is now within its 9th year of its EU membership and it´s a very interesting and practical to study how Czech court apply the European Union law within its everyday activity and whether they respect it or not and to which extent. The way as well as the extent of the EU law application by Czech courts on the Czech territory is to be demonstrated on three main areas: -                      Application and respect of basic EU Law principles by Czech courts, i.e. supremacy of the EU law, the direct and indirect effects; -                      Prejudicial questions´ practice in front of Czech courts; -                      Issue of Member States responsability for the infringement of the EU Law. Thusly, this paper is supposed to give to the readers a general overview about the EU application “style“, that is to say the “EU Law life“ on the Czech territory itself, in order them to get a basic knowledge on this issue for pure informative as well as law-related comparative reasons. Key words: Czech Republic, Czech courts, EU Law, basic principles of the EU Law, supremacy, direct effect, indirect effect, regulations, directives, the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic, general courts, administrative courts, Court of Justice of the European Union, prejudicial questions, references for preliminary rulings, Member States responsability for the infringement of the EU Law.