On Wednesday, 20 November 2024, the President of the Republic, Petr Pavel, visited the Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic. He attended a meeting with the agenda item entitled "Request of the President of the Republic for the consent of the Senate of the Parliament of the Czech Republic tonamesánby the judgesě Constitutionalof the court".
Speech by the President of the Republic during his visit to the Senate
Mr President, honourable Senators,
Let me begin my remarks today by congratulating all the newly elected Senators, both those who have defended their mandate and those who are sitting on these benches for the first time. And for you, the new senators, today is the first time that we will participate in the staffing of the Constitutional Court. As you know, this is a shared responsibility between the President and the Senate that is of paramount importance to the protection of constitutionality and human rights in our country.
When I first stood here and presented to you my idea or plan for staffing the Constitutional Court, I said that my goal was to nominate candidates from different areas of the legal profession, and that this selection would lead to a court that would be both professionally diverse and, above all, competent. And one in which experienced, courageous and also properly artistic constitutional judges of high moral integrity will rule. That is why I have so far proposed candidates from different legal professions, judges of different backgrounds, academics and lawyers, candidates with different professional specialisations and experience, men and women, different age groups and different world views.
Together with you, ten judges of the Constitutional Court have been appointed so far. There are still three seats left in this great renewal, one vacant this year and two more at the end of next year. When I was thinking about the current composition of the Constitutional Court, the analysis and the conversation with experts showed that the Constitutional Court deserves to strengthen its expertise in criminal law. This is represented in the current composition of the Constitutional Court primarily by Prof. Pavel Šámal, who came to the Constitutional Court from his position as President of the Supreme Court. Dr Josef Baxa, the current President of the Constitutional Court, was also a criminal judge in the past. But there are no more specialists in the field of criminal law in the Constitutional Court today. I therefore thought it right to look for a new candidate not at the top of the judiciary, but at its lower levels. For balance, ideally a practicing judge rather than a judicial officer. Of course, I also considered other professions, including prosecutors. In the end, however, I opted for a judge of the court of appeal, i.e. the court of first instance, which is the judge of the Regional Court in Brno, Dr. Dita Řepková. She has 16 years of experience as a criminal judge, first of the District Court and later of the Regional Court. There, she is dedicated to deciding on the most serious crimes. She is therefore able to look at the decision-making practice from below, which in my opinion is a desirable counterbalance to the judges who have come from the Supreme Court and the Supreme Administrative Court. I have always emphasised that I am looking for individuals who have a more varied professional experience behind them. And that is exactly the case with Dr. Beet. She started out as an assistant at the International Institute of Political Science in Brno, then under the guidance of Vojtěch Šimíček, later Vice President of the Constitutional Court. She continued as an assistant to the President of the Supreme Court and then to the Vice President of the Constitutional Court, Eliška Wagnerová. I am convinced that this gives Dr Řepková an important institutional memory that allows for a certain continuity.
She also teaches criminal law as a lecturer at the Judicial Academy. She also uses the knowledge from her judicial practice in her professional publications. She has also had prestigious internships abroad in the USA, Great Britain, and the Netherlands, including an internship at the European Court of Human Rights. And yet, she managed to earn her doctorate at Charles University a few years ago. As a candidate for Constitutional Judge, Dr. Řepková caught my eye in several ways. She has tried cases that have been in the media and has clearly stood up to the considerable pressure that has been associated with these cases. Above all, however, she impressed me in personal interviews with her authenticity, her honesty and her spontaneity. At the same time, I must say that she combines experience with professionalism and the ability to formulate complex issues clearly and comprehensibly, which is certainly important when interpreting the law. Talking to her, you will very quickly see that she has thought through what she is talking about, not because she has read it in the theoretical literature, but simply because she has lived it in and out of court. And that experience gives her words and decisions great persuasiveness.
I have stressed from the beginning that I would like to put together a Constitutional Court that is bold but not activist. With the ability to reflect on its own position vis-à-vis Parliament and other courts, including European and international courts. I was pleased to see that Dr Řepková thinks similarly. Judicial restraint is not a platitude for her. I am convinced that she will contribute to finding the desired balance so that the Constitutional Court is neither invisible nor omnipresent. The last impression I took away from our conversation was her humane, moderately conservative approach to life, which I am sure will please some of you.
Finally, let me thank the two Senate Committees that considered my nomination and unequivocally supported Dr Řepková. I appreciate this, and I believe that after today we will have one more common task left in the area of the Constitutional Court, and that will be the nomination of the two remaining candidates for judges of the Constitutional Court at the end of next year. Thank you for your cooperation and I look forward to the discussion in plenary.
Petr Pavel, Senate, 20 November 202
PHOTO - Tomas Fongus
castle.cz/ gnews - RoZ
English 
Czech 
Spanish 
French 
Italian 
German