Does the government's defence funding bill really only create an unenforceable political commitment?

Abstract:

The article is devoted to the draft law on defence financing, which aims to oblige the government to allocate an amount of at least 2% of GDP to defence in every draft law on the state budget. During the inter-ministerial comment procedure, the Supreme Audit Office expressed doubts whether the draft means anything more than an unenforceable political commitment in relation to the Chamber of Deputies". The article convincingly demonstrates, with the help of legal argumentation and interpretation of the Constitution of the Czech Republic, the Rules of Procedure of the Chamber of Deputies, as well as the established case law of the Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic, that if approved, the Chamber of Deputies will also be bound by the Defence Financing Act when approving the state budget. To do otherwise would violate constitutionality.

Jan Kudrna, associated professor, born 1976. He graduated from the Faculty of Law of Charles University, where since 1999 he has been working at the Department of Constitutional Law in the fields of constitutional law and state studies, which he teaches in both Czech and English. In addition, he is a long-standing member of the Department of Public Law at the Faculty of Security Management of the Police Academy of the Czech Republic, where he teaches constitutional law. He is also a member of the Legislative Council of the Government, a member of the Government Council for the Coordination of the Fight against Corruption, a member of the Disputes Committees of the Minister of the Interior, the Minister of Defence and the Chairman of the Office for Personal Data Protection.

Country: Czech Republic

25/05/2023

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