PRAGUE (TOL Education) – In its 30^th year, the Senate remains a stable yet ambivalent legislative body in the Czech Republic. With an asymmetrical parliament, the upper chamber of the central European state has few significant powers and the public holds little knowledge about the entity. However, the Senate finds a new purpose as it enters its fourth decade. (What purpose? – mtm)

History and Purpose

The Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic was established with the lower-level Chamber of Deputies on December 16, 1992. When the body was established following the 1989 Velvet Revolution, many Czech residents questioned the necessity of a second chamber. In Czechoslovakia, the Federal Assembly, featured both a lower- and upper-chamber. After the country’s dissolvement, Czech Parliament was unicameral for four years, leading to debate for the Senate’s existence and funding, one that continues to the present-day

The Czech public “started to question whether we really needed something new, if it hadn’t existed until then and we had been doing quite well without it,” Petr Just, in a Prague Radio International interview, said.

President Miloš Vystrčil, and Vice-Presidents Jiří Růžička and Jiří Drahoš lead the Czech Senate. The legislative chamber holds veto power, but a majority in the Chamber of Deputies may override the Senate’s veto. The upper-level chamber also consents to Constitutional and electoral changes and Constitutional Court nominees. Its 81 seats, one for each constituency in the state, are chosen through a set of electoral rounds. The first round is to decide the top two candidates, with the second round as a run-off election. If a candidate receives a majority of the vote in the first round, then a second round will not occur. The elections are structured in a similar manner to the U.S. Senate, where one-third of seats run every two years.

“There was very little discussion about what the Senate actually does.” Just said.

Authoritarianism’s Rise in Central Europe

In the former Communist region, the Czech Republic is unique in the present-day. Countries like Hungary and Slovakia have faced challenges to their democratic forms of government, where, in the former, Prime Minister Viktor Orban reinforced his ideas with a new constitution in 2011, upheld conservative values and transformed the country’s media landscape.

Prime Minister Andrej Babiš has proposed an abolition of the upper-chamber in the Czech Republic, but the idea faces a hurdle – the Czech people.

Czechs, Jan Hruška, a postdoctoral researcher at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland, said, do not like major change. The culture leans conservative, Hruška said, leading to Czechs’ reluctancy to modifications, in particular with their form of government. (awkward phrasing – mtm)

Within the Czech political culture, the necessity to remain with the country’s current government structure signifies that “a huge majority of the lower house cannot rewrite the rules of the democratic game” through “redrawing electoral boundaries or curbing the powers of the judiciary,” Hruška, in an article for the London School of Economics, said. (Awkward – mtm)

Czech Senators’ Outlook

I will add Senators’ quotes here, which will be about the Czech Senate at age 30 and in its current state. However, none have responded to my emails.