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Compared to other EU countries, litigation between employers and employees revolving around (un)equal treatment and/or discrimination issues are still not that common in the Czech Republic. Nevertheless a recent Czech Supreme Court judgement developed criteria upon which employees employed by the same employer would be entitled to equal remuneration for work they perform.

Employment agencies and employers using agency-contracted workforce (hereinafter referred to as the “Users”) shall ensure that working and wage conditions of temporarily assigned employees are not worse than conditions of Users’ other employees in comparable positions under provision of Sec 309(5) of Act No. 262/2006 Coll., Labour Code (hereinafter the “LC”). Unfortunately, the LC or any other executive regulation fails to define what particular working and wage conditions need to be provided to temporarily assigned employees if provided to Users’ employees.

Our firm annualy updates its own executive guide to Doing Business in the Czech Republic. The 2016 version is now available at the link provided below.

Employees’ temporary incapacity for work does not mean “vacation time,” so that when being recognized temporarily unfit for work, employees are still obliged to fulfil certain duties stipulated by the Labour Code (Act No. 262/2006 Coll., as amended, (“LC”)), and eventually other laws, primarily Act No. 187/2006 Coll., on Sickness Insurance (“SIA”), as amended. However, a recent Supreme Court judgement ruled that not every breach of employees’ obligations during temporary incapacity for work may lead to termination of employment by the employer.

In a recent European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) judgment (Bărbulescu v. Romania), the ECHR found no violation of Art. 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (right to respect private and family life, home and correspondence) in a situation where an employer monitored his employee’s company Internet use during working hours. This ECHR interpretation, which needs to be considered also in the context of the laws of the Czech Republic, does not collide with the present wording or interpretation of the Czech Labour Code (Act No. 262/2006 Coll., as amended, hereinafter the “LC”), nor a broader Czech labour case law.

Sensitive data, as a specific group of personal data, is understandably subject to a stricter regulation than other types of data/information; this regulation is clearly defining what data is precisely understood as sensitive one, demands specific forms of consent with processing as well as the qualifying few statutory exemptions when such data can be processed without consent; regulation also defines requirements for maintaining this data secure and confidential at all times. Health data is defined as specific information about physical or mental health of an individual/data subject.

Czech Republic has been offering investment incentives to foreign investors since 1998. The latest amendment, which has now been approved by the Czech Senate (on 19 March 2015) should come  into force on 1 May 2015 and extend the incentives to a broader group of potential investors. The amendment reacts chiefly to changes of the EU state aid legislation, especially to the newly effective Block Exemption Regulation, which directly applies to the Czech Investment Incentives Act, and to the newly approved regional aid map 2014 – 2020, which reduces acceptable state aid intensity in all regions of the Czech Republic (with the exception of Prague, where regional aid is not permitted at all).