The Constitutional Court found No 437 / 2012 Coll.

The Constitutional Court found of 27 November 2012 sp. zn.

Valid The Constitutional Tribunal found
Text versions: 10.12.2012
Contents
I. II. II./a II./b II./c II./d II./e II./f II./g III. III./a III./b III./c III./d III./e III./ea III./eb III./ec III./ed III./ee III./ef III./f III./g III./h IV. V. VI. VI./a VI./b VI./c VII. VII./a „§ 30 „§ 18a VII./b VII./c VII./d VII./e VII./f VIII. VIII./a § 121 VIII./b VIII./c IX. IX./a „HLAVA III § 70 § 72 § 73 § 76 § 77 IX./b IX./c X. X./a „§ 114 § 117 X./b X./c XI. XI./a XI./b „§ 4 § 28 XI./c „§ 35 XI./d „§ 36 XI./e „§ 48 XI./f „§ 50 XI./g XI./h „§ 14 XI./i XII.
437
FIND
The Constitutional Court
On behalf of the Republic
No 5, p. 1.
as follows:
I. Paragraph 30 (2) (d) of Act No. 435 / 2004 Coll., on Employment, as amended by Act No. 367 / 2011 Coll., is deleted from the date of the declaration of the finding in the Collection of Laws.
II. Paragraph 121 (1) in the words "for a maximum period of 36 months from the date of entry into force of this Act, unless otherwise specified," including the comma preceding to them, paragraph 4 of the first sentence in the words "no later than 36 months from the date of entry into force of this Act," including the comma preceding to them, paragraph 4 of the second sentence and paragraph 5 of the Act No. 372 / 2011 Coll., on health services and the conditions under which they are provided (Health Services Act), shall be deleted from the date of the declaration of findings in the Collection of Acts.
III. The provisions of Sections 76 and 77 of Act No. 372 / 2011 Coll., on Health Services and the Conditions of Their Provision (Law on Health Services) are deleted from the date of the declaration of the finding in the Collection of Laws.
IV. Paragraph 36 (3) of Act No. 372 / 2011 Coll., on health services and the conditions for their provision (Health Services Act), the words "Validity of a previously stated wish is 5 years." shall be deleted from the date of publication of the finding in the Collection of Laws.
V. In the remainder, the application is rejected.
Reasons

I.

Subject matter
1. On 6 January 2012, a motion from a group of 45 Members, for which Mr Bohuslav Sobotka, acting on behalf of Mr Jeroným Tejc, has been delivered to the Constitutional Court, on 12 November 2012, for annulment under the heading of those 14 laws. According to the appellants, they were adopted in a way that was not in line with some constitutional principles relating to the legislative process, since after the draft laws were rejected or returned by the Senate, the Chamber of Deputies discussed them in a joint debate with all of them and, in this debate, limited the speaking time of individual Members to 10 minutes and the number of speeches to a maximum of two.
2. In the event that the Constitutional Court would not comply with this proposal, the appellants further sought the annulment of Article 30 (2) (d) of Act No. 435 / 2004 Coll., on Employment, as amended by the contested Act No. 367 / 2011 Coll., and Article 18a (1) of Act No. 111 / 2006 Coll., on Aid in Substantial Needs, as amended by the contested Act No. 366 / 2011 Coll., in Words "and persons registered by jobseekers 54)." These provisions extended the possibility of public service provision to persons on the record of applicants for employment, with a maximum of 20 hours per week for no serious reason being the reason for the withdrawal from the register, provided that the applicant has been kept there continuously for more than 2 months. At the same time, they proposed the abolition of the transitional provisions of § 121 (1) and (5) of Act No. 372 / 2011 Coll., on health services and the conditions for their provision (Health Services Act), which provided for the obligation to re-register health service providers.
3. In the course of the proceedings, the Constitutional Court received two further proposals from other actively legitimate bodies which opposed the original proposal of the contested Health Services Act or some of its provisions. On 9 January 2012, a group of 20 senators, for whom Senator MUDr. Alena Derner, submitted a proposal to repeal Sections 70 to 78 of the Health Services Act, containing a new legislation of the National Health Information System. However, its proposal was also directed against § 114 (1) (g), § 117 (1) (e), (f), (g), (n) and (r) and § 3 (d), (e), (f), (g), (h), (i) and (m) of the Health Services Act, which define the facts of certain offences in the field of the provision of and penalties for health services, as well as the abovementioned transitional provisions of § 121 (1) and (5) of the Health Services Act, which were also covered by the proposal of a group of Members.
4. Finally, the proposal to repeal the Act on Health Services as a whole, which was delivered to the Constitutional Court on 13 February 2012, was submitted by another, from the appellants a different group of 41 Members, for which Mr Vojtěch Filip acts. These Members expressed, first and foremost, general objections to the way in which this law was adopted and the certainty of its content. With regard to its various provisions, Members argued that there was a breach of citizens' right to health care, which is newly provided, within the meaning of Article 28 (2), in conjunction with Article 4 (5) of the Health Services Act, only "with regard to specific conditions and objective possibilities." However, as contrary to the constitutional order, they also considered the limitation of the effects of the so-called "pre-stated wish 'under § 36 (3), (5) and (6), the obligation of the consent of legal representatives to the provision of health services to minor patients or to patients deprived of legal capacity under § 35, the definition of the rights and obligations of health service providers under § 45 to 47, the possibility of termination of care for patients under § 48 (1) and (2) and § 50, the possibility of handling of the patient's birth number pursuant to § 52, the regulation of the management of medical documentation under § 53 and the status of professional representatives under § 14 of the Health Services Act. If the Constitutional Court did not find reasons for the annulment of the contested law as a whole, they proposed the annulment of at least those provisions.
5. The proceedings for the motion of a group of senators were conducted under the sp. zn. The Constitutional Court, by its resolutions of 24 January 2012, sp. zn. The annulment of the Act on Health Services as a whole has already been initiated, as a result of which, pursuant to § 35 (2) of Act No. 182 / 1993 Coll., on the Constitutional Court, both proposals have become inadmissible. However, since they otherwise complied with the formalities laid down by this law, a group of Senators and a group of Members have been given the right to take part in the proceedings on the original proposal as its interveners, with the fact that the proposal to repeal the Health Services Act will be subject to due review to the extent of their objections in terms of its compliance with the constitutional order. This means that the subject matter of this procedure was defined by the proposals and objections of all three of the above-mentioned actively legitimate bodies.

II.

Arguments of the appellants and interveners
6. In favour of their proposals, the appellants and the interveners made the following arguments.

II./a

Limitation of the rights of opposition Members in the debate on the 14 laws contested
7. The appellants consider that certain measures which, as a whole, led to a breach of the constitutional principles relating to the legislative process have been used for the purposes of their rapid adoption. This should have happened specifically by:
(a) The President of the Chamber of Deputies has included draft laws which have been rejected or returned by the Senate on the agenda of the 25th session of the Chamber of Deputies against the objection of at least 20 Members. According to the appellants, it acted in breach of § 97 (3) and (4) in conjunction with § 54 (4), first sentence, paragraphs 5 and 6 of Act No. 90 / 1995 Coll., on the Rules of Procedure of the Chamber of Deputies, as amended, (hereinafter referred to as the Rules of Procedure).
b) As part of their renegotiation, the Chamber of Deputies has merged the debate on all fourteen bills. At the same time, its resolution limited the speaking time of Members to ten minutes and the number of their speeches in the combined debate to a maximum of two. In this case, too, the appellants see infringement of the Rules of Procedure, namely Article 59 (2) in conjunction with the first sentence of Article 54 (8).
(c) During their renegotiation, its Vice-President Lubomír Zaoralek, who was at this time the only member of the House of Deputies' leadership, was not admitted to the proceedings of the Assembly of Deputies. The President of the Chamber of Deputies has not even attempted an agreement in this regard, which the appellants consider to be a violation of Rule 30 (3) of the Rules of Procedure.
d) In the case of eleven contested laws - namely Acts No. 341 / 2011 Coll., 365 / 2011 Coll., 369 / 2011 Coll., 370 / 2011 Coll., 372 / 2011 Coll., 373 / 2011 Coll., 374 / 2011 Coll., 375 / 2011 Coll., 426 / 2011 Coll., 427 / 2011 Coll. and 428 / 2011 Coll. - the time limits for hearing them have been substantially shortened. The deadline for discussing the draft law in committee pursuant to Rule 91 (1) of the Rules of Procedure has been reduced by 20 or up to 30 days, as the case may be. There was also a shortening of the time limit provided for in Rule 95 (1) of the Rules of Procedure, which defines the period between the delivery of amendments to Members and the opening of third reading, at a limit of 48 hours, and in the case of Act No. 364 / 2011 Coll., amending certain laws relating to austerity measures under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, this should have been contrary to that provision on a proposal from the Member and not to the appellant. This procedure has been chosen despite the fact that the resolutions of the committees on draft laws have generally included extensive and substantial amendments, including in some cases dozens of pages of the text.
e) In the case of the pension reform laws, i.e. Act No. 426 / 2011 Coll., 427 / 2011 Coll. and 428 / 2011 Coll. the debate was merged at second reading, i.e. not only after their rejection by the Senate.
8. The aim of all these measures was to rapidly enforce government bills in the Chamber of Deputies so that they could become effective as soon as possible, as a rule on 1 January 2012. However, in order to achieve this objective, the use of the provisions of the Rules of Procedure was such as to eliminate or at least make it significantly difficult for the opposition to criticise, propose amendments or, if necessary, attempt to delay their adoption. This further weakened the possibility of opposition, which was already at an information disadvantage compared to government Members, to use consistently the means of defending the interests and rights of the political minority which make it available to it by the Constitution of the Czech Republic (hereinafter referred to as the Constitution) and the Rules of Procedure.
9. The constitutional principle of a democratic rule of law also implies minimum requirements for the possibility and quality of parliamentary debate, one of which is that the adoption of laws should take the form of a rational discourse. In this context, the appellants point to the Constitutional Court's legal conclusions contained in the finding of 15 February 2007, sp. zn. ÚS 77 / 06 (N 30 / 44 SbNU 349; 37 / 2007 Coll.), according to which the legislative process must enable an open debate between competitors. The parliamentary debate has a legitimate role to play in relation to the political decisions that have been taken, as the arguments for and against those that have played a role in their adoption are publicly set out. Through it, the public is then informed and confronted by these arguments, which can make their own judgment about the matter and adapt the outcome of this debate to their behaviour.
10. The European Court of Human Rights in the judgment of 6 October 2005 in Case No 74025 / 01 Hirst v United Kingdom and can also be relied upon by a recent decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court of 9 February 2010, sp. zn. 1 BvL 1 / 09 (BVerfGE 125, 175 - Hartz IV), which also places huge demands on the legislator to justify its legislative decision in a convincing and transparent manner. This decision repealed the setting of a minimum of living for certain groups of people because the German legislator did not submit a transparent calculation to the public, as it achieved some amounts.
11. In their further argument, the appellants summarise some of the general principles formulated by the Constitutional Court in its findings concerning the adoption of laws in a state of legislative emergency in relation to the legislative process. This is particularly about Parliament's commitment to the exercise of its powers and its duty to respect the rules which the legislature itself has established as a representative of power. At the same time, it also covers the fundamental requirement of a formally understood rule of law, which is to exclude the libido of decision-making by public authorities. Failure to comply with these rules can not only undermine the legitimacy of the adopted law, but also its legality. The form and interpretation of the Rules of Procedure of the parliamentary chambers must therefore be based on the principle of representative democracy, on the free exercise of the mandate of Members of Parliament, on their equality as representatives of the people, on freedom of expression and on free parliamentary debate. The principle of natural law must be respected to let all parties hear.
12. Among the above principles is also the principle of the protection of minorities, which is represented by the parliamentary opposition on parliamentary ground. Its representatives must be allowed, in the framework of legislative procedures, the unimpeded exercise of their constitutionally guaranteed rights, which are not limited to the right to participate in them, but may include rights enabling the parliamentary opposition to block or delay decisions taken by the majority. The appellants consider the most serious violation of the rights of the parliamentary opposition to be the merger of the debate with the Senate, rejected or returned by the bills. During the negotiation of the contested laws, the opposition's opposition's postulates were granted a responsible and constructive opposition when there was no abuse or abuse of these rights, thereby weakening or preventing the effective exercise of power by the government majority. While they admit that, after the exhaustion of all the options available to the opposition when discussing the government's proposals for legislation in Parliament's chambers, they acceded to a obstruction characterised by multiple submissions of more procedural proposals for changes to the agenda and more applications to the debate, but this approach was not led primarily by the idea of obstruction, but by substantive criticism of their content. The merger of the debate was thus evidently a penalty for the opposition having previously given rise to a two-day discussion of another draft law (then published as Act No 353 / 2011 Coll., amending Act No. 96 / 1993 Coll., on Construction Savings and State Support for Construction Savings, and supplementing Act No. 586 / 1992 Coll., on Income Tax, as amended by Act No. 35 / 1993 Coll., as amended, and Act No. 586 / 1992 Coll., on Income Tax, as amended; House Press No. 378, 6th Election). On the contrary, the reason for this restriction could not have been the time pressure on the adoption of the contested laws, because even if they had taken a similar length of time, the Chamber of Deputies would undoubtedly have approved them all by the end of November 2011. Moreover, such time pressure would not, in the sense of the finding of 1 March 2011 sp. zn. ÚS 55 / 10 (N 27 / 60 SbNU 279; 80 / 2011 Coll.), be considered as a legitimate and constitutionally viable reason for limiting the debate.
13. In addition to those constitutional aspects, it cannot be omitted that 14 of the contested laws have merged the debate in contravention of Rule 54 (8) of the Rules of Procedure, although that is precisely the provision that the majority of governments relied on. The appellants refer to the opinion of the Legislative Department of the Chamber of Deputies, which was requested by Vice-President of the Chamber of Deputies Lubomír Zaorálek during the meeting in question. According to this, in the proposal for a comprehensive opinion, the merger of debates is common only for points that are logically and materially related (e.g. for draft health services law, specific health services law and related "change" law). It is this connection that is the reason for the merger, as it makes no sense for a debate to be held repeatedly on a matter of almost identical or very similar substance. However, this purpose cannot be fulfilled in the event of a merger of debates to any non-related content. That opinion acknowledges that the reason for merging the debate could be to limit the number of Members' speeches to a total of two speeches after 10 minutes, given the dictation of Article 59 (2) of the Rules of Procedure, according to which the House may, without a debate, agree that "on the same matter ', a Member may speak no more than twice, but in such a case, each Member would have to be able to speak twice to each case, i.e. to each individual press or item.
14. In the process of the Vice-President of the Chamber of Deputies, Catherine Klasna, who deleted third and other Members' applications for debate, did not comment, but pointed out that among the commonly accepted legal principles is also the prohibition of abuse of rights, which forms part of the rule of law within the meaning of Article 1 (1) of the Constitution. In accordance with this principle, in certain situations, the exercise of the right may be limited to those who are only demonstrably abusing it, which could also be the case when the so-called obstruction would be exceeded. If the right of a Member by law had to be formally exercised at all times and under all circumstances, this could mean a material denial of the meaning of the work of the House, namely, parliamentary as such. However, the legislative department does not consider that this level would be exceeded in the present situation.
15. The motion to abolish the contested laws is also justified by the degradation of the Senate's constitutional role in the legislative process. The Senate, by its right to reject the bill or to return it with amendments, serves as the correctness of the Chamber of Deputies. It is in this regard that the reason for which the Rules of Procedure require the Senate's rejected or returned drafts to be presented only at the next meeting of the Chamber of Deputies, i.e. clearly not at the meeting in progress, no later than ten days after the Senate resolution or its amended version has been received. The purpose of this minimum time limit is to ensure the necessary time for Members to become familiar with the Senate resolution and its reasons and thus to decide with full knowledge of its position. For these reasons, the proposals appear to be disproportionate and inadequate to the constitutional principles of our Parliament. The bill is no longer debated in committees after its rejection or repayment, thereby substantially increasing the importance of the debate held at the Chamber of Deputies plenary. This is the only forum on which Members can use the arguments raised in the Senate to try to persuade the majority of the Chamber of Deputies to change its position or to approve a Senate amended version of the bill. The consequences of limiting the debate cannot be relativised by reference to three reading of the draft law, as, after the Senate resolution on the rejection or refunding of the bill, its new arguments as a correction institution and a polemical element to the second parliamentary chamber enter into the parliamentary discourse. This, moreover, is the very meaning of the two-chamber parliamentary system.
16. In the present case, the appellants refer to the Constitutional Court as representatives of the parliamentary opposition to open the way, given the serious doubts about the constitutionality of the decision of the parliamentary majority, to the Constitutional Court and thus to the transfer of the question at issue to the constitutional discourse, which is essential for the current democratic rule of law. They believe that, with the exception of the Senate, in the case of the contested laws, the other safeguards of the constitutional implementation of the legislative process, which the Constitutional Court includes the President of the Chamber of Deputies and the President of the Republic, have failed. In the event of the most serious breach of the rules of the democratic legislative process, that is to say, the merging of the debate on unrelated bills, did not want to intervene, whereas the Senate, given that the merger took place only after the rejection or repayment of the proposals in question, could not have intervened. They summarise that the adoption of the contested laws has led to interference in the rights, principles and guarantees enshrined in Articles 1 (1), 2 (3), 5, 6, 15, 26 and 36 of the Constitution and in Articles 4 (2) and 4, 21 (1) and (4) and 22 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms (hereinafter referred to as the Charter). Cumulation of measures limiting democratic debate on the ground of the Chamber of Deputies, in particular by reducing the time limits for hearing the contested laws, limiting the speaking time and the number of speeches, and finally by merging the House's debate after the Senate rejected or returned the draft of the contested laws with amendments, intervened in the rights of a number of Members (especially the opposition) who did not have the opportunity to argue against those laws in the parliamentary debate. It was an extreme case of arbitrary government majority. For laws which do not impartially restrict fundamental rights and freedoms under Articles 26, 28, 30, 31 and 32 (5) of the Charter, Parliament has failed completely in its constitutional role as a legitimacy instance.
17. The manner in which the contested laws have been dealt with is described by the appellants as an indication of the continuation of the trend towards the marginalisation of Parliament and the parliamentary debates, which had already taken place in the past in connection with the negotiation of Act No. 261 / 2007 Coll., on the stabilisation of public budgets, or the adoption of laws in a state of legislative emergency in November 2010. Its further speeches include frequent non-participation of the government majority during parliamentary debates on important topics or the recognition of any criticism of government designs as stalling and obstruction. The consequence of this tendency is that Parliament becomes a mere voting machine, a mere facade.

II./b

Self-administration in the adoption of the Law on Health Services in the Chamber of Deputies
18. The wrong procedure for adopting the draft law, but only this time in the case of the draft law on health services, is criticised by the Chamber of Deputies and by a group of Members who have intervened in this procedure. This is mainly due to the fact that the importance of this law, which has the character of the Code and its content, is not reflected in the new terminology, the basic conditions for the provision of health services, state status, health service providers and patients and their relationships. Given its content, it was therefore appropriate to expect its discussion to take place within an appropriate timeframe, preferably when reaching a broader consensus on its content, including at least part of the parliamentary opposition alongside the coalition, in order to maintain the continuity of this legislation even after the next elections. However, this did not happen.
19. According to the interveners, the method of approval was completely outside the scope of the Rules of Procedure and the practice of the hearing. This is not only the merger of the debate with the unrelated bills that were accompanied by a number of night meetings, but also by the facts before the debate. It is, for example, that the draft law in question was circulated to Members on 1 July 2011, i.e. during the period of leave, without the draft amendment of Act No. 48 / 1997 Coll., on Public Health Insurance, and on the amendment and addition of certain related laws, as amended, (hereinafter referred to as the "Public Health Insurance Act '), which is closely related to that law. He was put into a comment procedure only during October, originally only for 10 days, later for 20 days, while the internal comment procedure on the amendment of Act No. 258 / 2000 Coll., on the Protection of Public Health and on the amendment of certain related laws, as amended. Such short periods have prevented qualified comments from being made by the professional public, even if it is a code that affects the vast area of human rights. Moreover, most of the comments and objections made to the professional public on the draft law were not accepted at all. In this procedure, the interveners see the elements of arbitrariness and as a result of their infringement of Articles 1 (1), 2 (3), 23 (3) and 44 (3) of the Constitution.
20. Finally, the object of their objections is the fact that the adoption of the draft law did not take place without so-called stickers, for example, when it included passages on the installation of the management of the General Health Insurance Company or the modification of the system of payment and the pricing of medicinal products and foodstuffs for special medical purposes on the regulation of the price of medicines. Such a procedure is not in accordance with the legislative rules of the Government or the case-law of the Constitutional Court, namely the finding of sp. zn.

II./c

Infringement of the prohibition on forced labour and certain other fundamental rights as a result of conditional entitlement to unemployment benefit
21. The contested Act No. 366 / 2011 Coll., amending Act No. 111 / 2006 Coll., on aid in material distress, as amended, Act No. 108 / 2006 Coll., on Social Services, as amended, Act No. 117 / 1995 Coll., on State Social Support, as amended, and other related laws have been amended with effect from 1 January 2012 by the legislation of the Public Service Institute under Section 18a (1) of the Act on aid in material emergency. The Institute in question, which itself was introduced into the legal system with effect from 1 January 2009, initially pursued the purpose of motivating beneficiaries of aid benefits in material distress to increase their livelihood contribution by their active activities. In order to do this, a minimum of 20 hours per month of public service activity was sufficient, and the increase could also be achieved by carrying out a gainful activity or by volunteering. The new legislation has brought about fundamental changes to this institute. The public service is no longer carried out only by persons in material need, but also by persons on the record of jobseekers, on the basis of a written contract, containing, in addition to the basic data on such persons, the place, subject matter and duration of the public service. This contract is concluded with the Regional Branch of the Labour Office of the Czech Republic (hereinafter referred to as the "Labour Office ') in agreement with the municipality or other body for which it is to be provided, without remuneration. Other public service conditions are similar to those of employment.
22. Paragraph 30 (2) of the Employment Act took effect on the same day. According to the new text of point (d) of this provision, the Regional Branch of the Labour Office is entitled and is required to exclude from the employment records such a candidate who, without serious reason, refuses to carry out a public service offer for a maximum of 20 hours a week if he is kept in that register continuously for more than 2 months.
23. The appellants consider that the two contested provisions are contrary to the right to freely choose employment and the prohibition of forced labour. The first of these is enshrined in Article 23 (1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 6 (1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, published under No 120 / 1976 Coll., and Article 6 (1) of the United Nations General Assembly Declaration on Progress and Development in the Social Field of 1969, as well as in Article 1 (1) of the European Social Charter, published under No 14 / 2000 Coll., and Article 1 (1) of the Convention on Employment Policy (ILO Convention) No 122), published under No 490 / 1990 Coll., which results in commitments for the Czech Republic, to enable each Member State to have the opportunity to obtain the means of their lives freely chosen by them. As regards the prohibition of forced labour, Article 9 of the Charter and Article 4 of the Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (hereinafter referred to as the Convention) provide, in particular, for what cannot be regarded as forced labour. On the contrary, its positive definition is found in the Convention on Forced or Compulsory Work (ILO Convention No 29), published under No 506 / 1990 Coll., for the purposes of which, pursuant to Article 2 (1) thereof, it is referred to as "forced or compulsory labour ', any work or service which is enforced on any person under the threat of any penalty and to which the said person has not volunteered. According to the appellants, the penalty should be understood to mean any damage affecting the removal or restriction of a person's right or freedom, and the prohibition applies to both public authorities and private entities. Article 2 (2) of this Convention provides for exemptions not covered by this prohibition.
24. First of all, the objected contradiction relates to the fact that Section 18a of the Law on aid in material distress included aid to entities other than municipalities as well as public works. These can thus be carried out for the benefit of the State, the local authorities, non-profit organisations, or even business entities. However, such a definition is problematic, according to the applicants. The public service should be carried out in the public interest, i.e. in favour of a wider range of persons, for charitable or humanitarian purposes, but not for the profit of business entities. This is also the case with Article 2 (2) (e) of the Convention on Forced or Compulsory Work, which, by way of derogation from the prohibition on forced labour, allows smaller municipal services performed by members of the municipality in their direct interest, provided that they can be considered as ordinary civil obligations attributable to the members of the municipality and those or their direct representatives have the right to comment on the need for such services. It is clear that these conditions do not fulfil the public service obligations for private companies. The contested provisions are, for this reason, at the same time, manifestly contrary to Article 4 (1) of the Convention on forced or compulsory work and Article 4 (3) (d) of the Convention. Taking into account the fact that the law does not lay down any limit on the duration of the public service activities, it can be concluded that the consideration of the employment office in its mediation is not limited in any way and therefore there is a need to fear that the Institute may be abused for business purposes. However, its abuse for economic development purposes, including aid in the areas of environmental improvement, or as a means of labour discipline, cannot be ruled out, although the use of forced or compulsory work for these purposes is prohibited by Article 1 (b) and (c) of the Convention on the Elimination of Forced Work (ILO Convention No 105), published under No 231 / 1998 Coll.
25. The exclusion from the registration of jobseekers is also of a penalty nature, with a number of other negative consequences. It concerns the withdrawal of unemployment and retraining aid, the creation of an obligation to cover public health insurance premiums and the absence of benefits for assistance in a material emergency. The law assumes that the exercise of the public service is the nature of the activity of dependent activity under labour law, as evidenced by the appellants by the calculation of the various sub-aspects of the legislation. Consequently, the above-mentioned sanctions are a threat to the employment of the applicant in the event that the public service would be refused, as a result of which he is forced to do so. This conclusion is also in line with the way in which the European Court of Human Rights sees the threat to the prohibition of forced labour, that is to say, any significant penalty (i.e. punishment in the area of criminal law and administrative punishment) or any other significant interference in the legal sphere of the person concerned. The ILO authorities also point out in their opinions that the penalty may also take the form of a loss of rights or benefits. Involuntary, as the appellants submit, presupposes action against the will of the person concerned, and any formal consent granted must be examined, depending on the circumstances, whether it was granted freely by the person concerned and not under an unacceptable penalty. In the past, the Constitutional Court itself defined the sign of coercion as a coercive to work which is "administrative nature '," with the threat of a penalty resulting from the ratio of authority and subordination', in situations of a type comparable to a negative account of what the prohibited forced labour within the meaning of Article 9 (2) of the Charter is not [cf. the finding of 22 March 1994 sp. zn. Pl. ÚS 37 / 93 (N 9 / 1 SbNU 61; 86 / 1994 Coll.]; the finding of 7 July 1994 sp. All these characteristics meet the applicable legal definition of public service.
26. The case law of the European Court of Human Rights and of the Constitutional Court requires an assessment of the burden of carrying out forced labour or service for the person concerned, i.e. whether it is obvious injustice, oppression, or unnecessary, unjustified hardness or suffering. In accordance with Article 4 of the Convention, as well as the legal conclusions contained in paragraphs 33 and 37 of the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights of 23 November 1983 in Case No 8918 / 80 Van der Mussel v Belgium, the proportionality of the measure adopted should therefore be assessed. In fact, if the burden is negligible or normal, that is to say, causing the obligor a zero, negligible, or even completely standard and normal injury, the use of variations to the de minimis argument can also help to discuss work that would otherwise fulfil all other features of prohibited forced labour. If, on the contrary, this is a burden that is extremely burdensome and intolerable, the voluntary taking over of the obligation to carry out such work may be called into question. According to the applicants, these grounds apply to the case. Taking into account that the performance of a public service can be ordered up to half of the fixed weekly working hours, i.e. 20 hours, while the work is not rewarded in any way by the worker, it can be considered that the burden of the service may be very burdensome for him because he does not receive adequate remuneration for the performance of his work. In addition, during the course of the public service, the person concerned is not insured against pensions, which may be highly negative in its position in subsequent decisions on its pension, in particular when deciding on invalidity pensions.
27. Another objection concerns the infringement of the contested legislation with the right to adequate substantive unemployment insurance under Article 26 (3) of the Charter, which constitutes one of the essential aspects of the right to work, as provided for in a number of international documents, including international human rights treaties and fundamental freedoms. These contracts impose an obligation on the Czech Republic to provide unemployment benefits. This is the Convention on the Minimum Social Security Standard (ILO Convention No. 102), published under No 461 / 1991 Coll., and the European Social Security Code (Council of Europe Convention No. 48), published under No 90 / 2001 Coll. s., defining the concept of covered social events and defining the range of protected persons as well as the duration of the provision of benefits. That term includes, in accordance with Article 20, the cessation of earnings, as provided for by national law, caused by the impossibility of obtaining adequate or appropriate employment where the protected person is able to work and willing to work. Under these contracts, the grant of unemployment benefits may be limited for only two reasons which these contracts provide for in their Article 24 (1). However, the reason set out in the contested provision of Paragraph 30 (2) (d) of the Employment Act cannot be sub-set under them.
28. Refusal to perform a public service will result in the removal of the person still receiving unemployment benefit. This aid is a benefit of social security, the provision of which is subject to the prior payment of insurance premiums on a gainful basis. Thus, persons engaged in a gainful activity, through these contributions, pay premiums in the event of an adverse social event, which is unemployment. Since the provision of unemployment benefit is based on the insurance principle, the person who has paid the premium for a specified period of time should receive insurance benefits on the basis of pre-defined conditions lacking an element of randomness when the insurance event arises. However, in the case of persons to whom a public service is offered by the employment office, further provision of unemployment benefit after two months of registration will become conditional on the performance of the public service, without it being possible to determine in advance whether and when they will receive such an offer, what work will be the subject of the public service and what the scope and duration of the service will be. After two months, the legal conditions for the granting of unemployment benefit will be added to another, which depends solely on the nature of the regional branch of the employment office, which, given the wide discretion, does not change the possibility of an appeal. Nor can it be overlooked the approach of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, according to which jobseekers must "work off" unemployment benefits paid out of "all of our pockets," which completely fails to see that these people have already paid for possible future unemployment benefits in the course of their employment. In the case of the vast majority of workers, there will be a contribution significantly higher than that paid to them during their active life. In addition, some applicants, typically graduates of secondary and university schools, also affected by the contested provisions, receive only the amount of public health insurance premiums, which amounted to CZK 723 per month last year.
29. The appellants do not agree with any other case presented by the Ministry according to which the public service is offered to the long-term unemployed, i.e. for more than one year. Long-term unemployment is linked to several typical groups, which is evidenced by statistical monitoring. They are either those who are more at risk of losing their jobs than others (e.g. disabled persons, persons of a higher working age or parents of young children), or those who actually avoid work. In doing so, the sanctions imposed on persons who did not sufficiently seek employment allowed for existing legislation. In the event of a consistent check on target groups that would abuse the records, there were therefore instruments for the disability of such actions. However, the new legislation no longer links the public service institute only to the long-term unemployed and dependant on benefits of aid in material need, but only to the register of jobseekers themselves, for a period of only two months, i.e. short-term unemployment.
30. The public service was originally one of the active elements in the system of assistance in material distress, i.e. it was part of the assistance necessary to ensure the basic living conditions enshrined in Article 30 (2) of the Charter. Its main objective was to preserve or restore the working habits of a person who has long been in material distress. However, as a result of the changes in question, the Institute has become part of the legal definition of the right to adequate material unemployment insurance within the meaning of Articles 26 (3) and 41 (1) of the Charter. It is clear from the definition of these provisions that "adequate material security" guarantees a much higher level of protection than "ensuring basic living conditions." However, the legal regulation in force blends these two categories or constitutional rights. As a result, the right to adequate physical security is basically negligent by moving to the level of ensuring basic living conditions, which is the implementation of other social law. On the basis of the above, jobseekers receiving unemployment benefit may view the public service offer as a significant interference with their right to human dignity within the meaning of Articles 1 and 10 (1) of the Charter.
31. In conclusion, the appellants state that the contested provisions are contrary to the right to a fair remuneration for the work provided for in Article 28 of the Charter, since the scope of the public service may be up to 20 hours a week without receiving a remuneration for the person carrying out those services. Finally, they also see the right to assistance in material distress under Article 30 (2) of the Charter. The fact that a person refuses to perform a public service causes, in the six months following the exclusion from the register of applicants for employment, that, pursuant to Article 3 of Act No. 111 / 2006 Coll., on aid in material distress, as amended, (hereinafter referred to as "the Law on aid in material distress'), he is not considered to be a person in material need and therefore does not have the right to receive benefits in material distress, even if the other conditions for their admission are met. For many unemployed, therefore, there is a serious risk of significant debt or social exclusion. The appellants have doubts as to whether the refusal to perform the public service should justify the exclusion from the register of jobseekers, or that the State should withdraw the right to help a person who is effectively in material need to ensure its basic living conditions. Although Paragraph 3 (3) of the Law on aid in material need gives the Regional Branch of the Labour Office the possibility, in justified cases, to consider such a person as a person in material need, it is not entitled to such recognition.
32. For all those reasons, the appellants consider the contested provisions to be contrary to Articles 1, 9, 10 (1), 26 (3) and 30 (2) in conjunction with Articles 41 (1) and 4 (4) of the Charter, as well as the abovementioned provisions of international human rights and fundamental freedoms.

II./d

Inadmissible retroactive effect of the obligation to re-register health service providers
33. Finally, the appellants call for the repeal of the transitional provisions of § 121 (1) and (5) of the Act on Health Services, which provides for the obligation to re-register the operators of non-state health care facilities under the existing Act No. 160 / 1992 Coll., on health care in non-state health institutions, as amended.
34. At the outset, they acknowledge that the legislature has the right to lay down new, even stricter conditions for the pursuit of business activities, while, at the same time, imposing a law on those who carry on such business activities to fulfil those conditions within a certain legal period. Any failure to comply could justify withdrawal of the business authorisation in the relevant proceedings. However, they do not agree with the solution under which the legal or legal person in business will no longer be authorised by law, i.e. without any administrative procedure, without fulfilling any of the newly established conditions.
35. According to the contested provisions, non-state health service operators may engage in business activities for which they have been authorised under the existing legislation only 36 months from the entry into force of the Health Services Act. If they wish to provide such services after the expiry of this period, they must, within 9 months of the entry into force of this Act, submit an application for a new authorisation to provide health services, thereby resubmitting once-submitted evidence of their professional competence, the fulfilment by the competent public health authority of the conditions for the physical and technical equipment of the medical establishment or the approval by the competent authority of the approved operating order of the medical establishment. They must also demonstrate their integrity, medical fitness and the right to use the premises in which they provide health services.
36. The consequences of the contested provisions may in some cases be far more serious than the mere "completely unnecessary" administrative harassment of existing operators of non-state health facilities. This is demonstrated by the appellants on the example of a doctor performing a private medical practice who has obtained a registration of a non-state medical establishment on the basis of a second-degree attestation, that is to say, at the time, a test entitled to the duties of a primary, e.g. in the field of internal medicine. The administrative authority has rightly and in accordance with the legislation in force at that time concluded that this qualification also authorises the doctor to perform private medical practice in the field of cardiology, even if the competent doctor did not have a former temporary examination in this field, but only a second degree examination in the field of internal medicine. It is generally known and it follows from the qualification programmes at the time that a doctor with a second-degree attestation had to handle all the extension branches of internal medicine (including cardiology) to the same extent as if he had completed the extension tests from these fields. At present, however, according to new legislation, including Act No. 95 / 2004 Coll., on the conditions for obtaining and recognising professional competence and specialised competence for the exercise of the medical profession of doctor, dental practitioner and pharmacist, as amended (hereinafter referred to as "Act No. 95 / 2004 Coll. '), cardiology is a separate basic field. Therefore, a private doctor who will be newly applying for authorisation to provide medical services in the field of cardiology will not comply with the newly established qualification conditions for the pursuit of the profession in the field of cardiology, as he will not have the so-called specialist competence in the field of cardiology under the latter law. It can be a private doctor who has been very experienced for many years and successfully practises private practice to the satisfaction of his patients both in the field of internal medicine and in the field of cardiology, on the basis of the now abolished second-degree attestation from internal medicine, without having previously completed an extension examination from the field of cardiology. Moreover, its additional completion within a period of 36 months may be extremely difficult for older private doctors, because the qualification and training programme for the specialist training in cardiology, as well as from other athetics medical disciplines, requires not only the examination before the commission, but also the completion of an internship at clinics and other higher workplaces over a number of months. Undoubtedly, they would have to suspend their practice for this purpose in the long term.
37. According to the applicants, it is clear from the above that this is a retroactive intervention in the rights previously acquired by such a private doctor. A similar situation also occurs in other medical fields, where, on the basis of the second degree attestations, a registration of a non-state medical facility for the initial extension and now a basic medical field has been granted, but this is no longer sufficient to fulfil the conditions for the pursuit of private medical practice in the relevant expertise. Thus, the doctor concerned ceases to be entitled only on the basis of a change of law, without any guilt. For these reasons, the contested provisions infringe the substance of the right to business enshrined in Article 26 (1) of the Charter and constitute an inadmissible retroactive interference with the rights already acquired, contrary to the principle of legal certainty which forms part of the concept of a democratic rule of law under Article 1 (1) of the Constitution.
38. The objections in question against the transitional provisions of the Health Services Act, which at the same time conclude the appellants' arguments, were raised on the same grounds by a group of Senators having the status of intervener in this proceeding.

II./e

Indefinite purpose of the new legislation of the National Health Information System and the unacceptable scope of personal data published on health professionals
39. The group of Senators also proposes to repeal the provisions of Sections 70 to 78 of the Health Services Act, which contain new legislation of the National Health Information System. Compared to the legislation still in force (i.e. above all Sections 67c to 67i of Act No. 20 / 1966 Coll., on the care of the people, as amended, and Decree No. 552 / 2004 Coll., on the transfer of personal and other data to the National Health Information System for the needs of the management of national health registers), this database does not constitute a mere link between existing registers, which have legally specified and limited purposes, but also allows the transmission of data for other purposes. However, it is no longer established how the database is to be technically established or how and when the data stored therein are to be coded and which data are to be anonymised. Moreover, the purpose of this database, as defined in Section 70 (1) of the Health Services Act, is very general, vague and inclusive. Nothing in any way limits its future form and use, whereby the contested regulation conflicts not only with Directive 95 / 46 / EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data (hereinafter referred to as "Directive 95 / 46 / EC of the European Parliament and of the Council '), according to which such data may be collected only for specified and explicit purposes, but also with Article 10 (3) of the Charter and Article 10 (1) of the Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and the dignity of a human being in connection with the application of biology and medicine: the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine, as published under No 96 / 2001 Coll., (hereinafter referred to as" the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine').
40. Part of the National Health Information System is according to § 72 (1) (d) of the Health Services Act and the National Register of Health Workers. As is apparent from Section 76 of this Act, this register contains structured data on health professionals, including visiting persons and persons who have acquired competence to pursue health professions outside the Czech Republic. It shall be the birth number, the address of the usual residence, the date and place of acquisition of professional or specialised competence or specific competence, the starting, interruption or termination of the profession and the loss of medical authorisation, as well as the loss of medical fitness, the loss of integrity and the duration of the period for which the activity is prohibited. With the exception of the birth number and address of the permanent residence, this register should be made publicly available on the Ministry of Health's website.
41. To the extent so defined the published data, the interveners see the non-compliance of that provision with the purpose and purpose of Article 10 (3) of the Charter, according to which everyone has the right to protection against unauthorised collection, disclosure or other abuse of personal data, as well as the right to protection against interference with private life within the meaning of Article 10 (2) of the Charter. They consider that there is no reason to maintain such a list of all health professionals in the Czech Republic, including some discreet personal data. In the case of doctors, dental practitioners and pharmacists, duplicate lists are already kept by their chambers according to § 6a (9) of Act No. 220 / 1991 Coll., on the Czech Medical Chamber, the Czech Dental Chamber and the Czech Pharmacy Chamber, as amended ("Act No. 220 / 1991 Coll. '). However, these public lists do not contain certain serious personal data on registered persons, such as medical data, medical status or interruption of the practice of the medical profession, which will also have to be published, which can be considered as unacceptable and unjustified interference in the privacy of citizens engaged in the medical profession.
42. In their arguments, the interveners refer also to the comments made by the Director of the Legal Department of the Office for Personal Data Protection ("the Office ') of November 2011, according to which the legislation (at the time only proposed) in question is not in conformity with European Union law or with the standard rules on the protection of personal data in the countries of the European Union. According to him, keeping a duplicate public list of doctors, dentists and pharmacists is contrary to the principle that if a public list is to be kept, it should only be kept once in a single place. The National Register of Non-Medical Healthcare Workers, i.e. persons referred to in Act No. 96 / 2004 Coll., on the conditions for obtaining and recognition of competence for the pursuit of non-medical health professions and for carrying out health care activities and amending certain related laws (Law on Non-medical Medical Professions), as amended, would therefore be sufficient in a situation where medical workers are already listed by individual chambers. According to this statement, the draft Health Services Act was not discussed with the Authority. It objected to undue, duplication and serious interference in the privacy of natural persons arising from the management of the register in question.

II./f

Uncertainties and discrepancies of the definition of administrative offences in the field of the provision of health services and the inadequacy of the amount of penalties for their committing
43. In the next part of their proposal, Senators seek the annulment of certain provisions of the Health Services Act which define the facts of administrative offences. This is mainly an administrative offence under Section 117 (3) (d) of the Health Services Act, committed by the health service provider by violating the obligation of confidentiality under Section 51 of this Act, and for which a fine of up to CZK 1 000 000 may be imposed. The interveners see the unconstitutional nature of the contested provision in the inadequacy of that penalty, which is justified by the fact that, in view of the facts of Section 180 of the Criminal Code, that administrative offence must concern only minor cases of infringements of the compulsory secrecy of health workers. However, they also point out the vagueness of the many provisions of the Health Services Act, which often puts the health care worker before the legal interpretation of the question of when he is obliged to remain silent and when, on the contrary, to provide information. This applies, for example, to the provisions of Paragraph 33 (3). In the context of a patient who cannot identify, or verify, persons who have the right to be informed of his or her current state of health and the acquisition of patient-led medical records and copies of medical documentation, due to his or her medical condition, health service providers and individual healthcare professionals. On the one hand, it is therefore obliged to submit this information under penalty, but on the other hand it must not give it to a person without authorisation. In particular, in cases where someone seeks information on the grounds that the damage suffered by the patient is rightly felt to be self-inflicted, such as as a cooperative, a friend or similar, which are usually highly emotional, it may be that some of the information is submitted to a person who is later found not to be close. For example, even sanctions located in the middle of the legal margin (500 000 CZK) would be clearly inadequate.
44. In this context, however, the interveners also refer to Article 51 (2) (d) of the Health Services Act, according to which disclosure of data or other facts for criminal proceedings is not considered to be a breach of confidentiality in the manner laid down by law governing criminal proceedings. The views on the interpretation of this provision are diverging. In one view, each person is obliged, on request, to communicate to the law enforcement authorities the facts for which they are requesting, even without the consent of the patient, even if they are cases not subject to notification or an obligation to prevent the offence. However, there is also a different view that such information cannot be submitted without further action by law enforcement authorities, since, under the special provision of Section 8 (5) of the Criminal Code, such information can only be submitted with the consent of the judge. In the event of an unauthorized non-submission of information to a medical worker, a fine of up to CZK 50,000 from the law enforcement authority is thus at risk, but if a different legal interpretation were to be applied and the data were to be transmitted, for example, by the Czech Police without the consent of the judge, it would threaten the health service provider a fine of up to CZK 1,000 000. In view of the vaguely and vaguely formulated provision of the law, it is very dangerous to impose such strict sanctions for infringements, especially in situations where workers are often unable to act and at the best of will to avoid the risk that they will provide some information unjustly or, on the contrary, do not provide it, although they should.
45. The objection to the inadequacy of the amount of the penalty is also invoked by the interveners in relation to other administrative offences that can be committed by health service providers. This is the provision of medical services to the patient without his consent under § 117 (1) (n) of the Health Services Act, for which a fine of up to CZK 500,000 can be imposed. The interveners point out that it is very difficult to decide whether a situation has already occurred where health services can be provided to a citizen even without his consent and when this situation has not yet occurred. There may be unclear and unclear cases, such as where a person endangers himself or his surroundings, but does not "immediately ', or where a healthcare professional considers that urgent care should be provided to a minor child required to save life and health, regardless of the position of the legal representative, and the case is subsequently assessed differently.
46. For a breach of the obligation to maintain or maintain medical documentation or to dispose of medical documentation in accordance with the provisions of § 53 (1), not to allow access to, and consultation of, medical documentation in accordance with § 64 (1), in accordance with the provisions of § 65, allowing access to or access to medical documentation in breach of the provisions of § 65 and the failure to obtain an extract or copies of medical documentation in accordance with § 66 (1) or (2), i.e. for administrative offences under § 117 (3) (e), (f), (g), (h) and (i) of the Health Services Act, the health service provider is liable for a fine of up to CZK 500,000. According to the applicants, the health service provider is also in the same difficult situation as when there is a risk of penalties for infringements of the obligation of confidentiality. This is particularly true when the question of who is and who is not a close person of the patient or who is required to make available the medical documentation and to make copies and to whom it is not allowed to comply is sometimes very difficult to assess.
47. As regards non-compliance with the notification requirement, non-disclosure of information and non-transmission of a copy of the medical file or extract from the medical file to another health service provider, i.e. administrative offences under § 117 (1) (e), (f) and (g) of the Health Services Act, some patients do not have a registered practitioner at all and no legal obligation to have a registered practitioner is laid down. For this reason, it is relatively difficult for an outpatient specialist to ensure a legal obligation to pass information on a patient to a registered health service provider. However, there is a penalty of up to CZK 300,000 for failure to fulfil these obligations. In the event of failure to ensure the body of the deceased in accordance with the provisions of § 84 (2) (a), (c) and (d), which is an administrative offence within the meaning of § 117 (3) (m), there is a problem for a registered general practitioner to fulfil this obligation in a situation where he is primarily obliged to provide care for patients who have arrived at his medical establishment and, consequently, to provide a visit service for patients who cannot come to the medical establishment in view of their health status. All these cases of living care should take precedence over a situation where a registered adult practitioner is to carry out an examination and examination of the deceased's body. Thus, if the obligation were not fulfilled, the penalty of CZK 300,000 would seem completely disproportionate, and even a penalty of CZK 100,000 would be very sensitive to ordinary private practitioners.
48. Finally, in relation to administrative offences pursuant to § 117 (1) (r) and § 114 (1) (g), which are committed by the provider by a non-measures of the medical facility by a mark provided for in § 45 (2) (d) of the Health Services Act or by the transfer of data to the National Health Information System, for which a penalty of CZK 200,000 and up to CZK 100,000 are at risk in the first instance.
49. The interveners take the view that the contested provisions do not comply with the rules of proportionality and effectiveness laid down in Article 4 (1) and (4) of the Charter. They are aware that it is not the role of the Constitutional Court to examine the amount of individual penalties for individual administrative offences or offences, as well as that the law only sets the upper limit of those penalties, and that the administrative discretion will be required to determine the appropriate amount of the penalty in a particular case. However, the Constitutional Court should consider very high sanctions for health service providers for offences where the rule of conduct is not clearly laid down by law and allows for several possible legal interpretations. For this reason, the interveners propose that the provisions of the law in question be repealed, with the legislator setting a time limit for the establishment of adequate sanctions and the specification of the rules of conduct for which penalties may be imposed.

II./g

Limitation of citizens' right to health care and patient freedom to decide on their own rights
50. The last set of objections in relation to the Law on Health Services, which the Constitutional Court dealt with in this proceedings, was raised in its proposal by a group of Members having the status of intervener. At the outset of their proposal, Members state that, according to its explanatory memorandum, the contested law can be characterised as a code-type law containing a general provision for the provision of health services, the reason for which was that the present regulation did not guarantee the equality of the conditions for the operation of health facilities for all operators, did not allow for effective penalties in the event of infringements of the legal obligations in the operation of health facilities, was incomplete, factually and legally overtaken, and in addition it completely neglected the quality and safety of the healthcare provided as a primary requirement by the State to the health operator. Despite the objectives pursued, the interveners consider the new legislation to be contrary to the Constitution, the Charter and a number of international treaties. As a result, the patient becomes only a passive participant with limited rights to decide which care, in which facility and at what level it is to be provided.
51. With regard to specific shortcomings, the contested law reregulates health services and not the healthcare that has been used so far, referred to both the Constitution and the Charter. This alone constitutes a violation of constitutional standards. According to Section 28 (2) of the Health Services Act, the patient is guaranteed the right to provide health services at an appropriate professional level, which according to Section 4 (5) of the Health Services Act means "the provision of health services under the rules of science and recognised medical practice, while respecting the patient's individuality, taking into account specific conditions and objective possibilities." The consequence of this change, according to the interveners, is the limitation of the patient's fundamental right to care provided under § 11 (1) of Act No. 20 / 1966 Coll., on the care of the people, as amended, (hereinafter referred to as the "People's Health Care Act '), in line with the current available knowledge of medical science, as well as the reduction of the patient's confidence in doctors and the level of services they provide. It has also reduced the legal certainty of patients that they will be treated properly and best in the health sector in the 21st century. Patient treatment should always be based on up-to-date scientific knowledge, but if the law allows health services to be provided with" specific conditions and objective options', it will thus awaken "treatment 'and insufficiently instrumented and staffed and underfunded bodies. The patient cannot resist such action.
52. That provision is at the same time contrary to Article 4 The Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine which obliges States to ensure that any action in the field of health is in accordance with relevant professional obligations and standards. This Convention also provides in Article 24 for the right of persons who have been harmed to a fair compensation, but which is excluded by the new legislation with reference to the "specific conditions and objective possibilities' of the installation concerned.
53. Instead of dealing with long-term health problems systematically in a comprehensive and negotiated political consensus and after consultation with experts, the government seeks to reduce the quality (and thus the price) of care provided. By its content, the law infringes Article 31 of the Charter, according to which everyone has the right to health protection and free health care. If patients' participation in treatment is increasing so vigorously, and while health care facilities are also covering their efforts to achieve better and more modern treatment, they must be granted to all citizens. However, the provisions of paragraphs 45 to 47 of the Health Services Act do not regulate any obligation to treat the patient as best as possible and in time.
54. Against the right of citizens to freely decide on their rights, health and future life, there is an adjustment under Section 36 (5) of the Health Services Act. This provision introduces a long-awaited institute of "pre-stated desire" enabling the patient to decide what medical procedures he wishes or does not wish to undergo in the future if he is no longer able to decide on them. However, that provision (the interveners here probably meant Article 36 (3) of the Health Services Act) limits its wish to only 5 years, which is contrary to the purpose of the Institute. For example, in people suffering from Alzheimer's disease, the ability to think rationally is completely lost over time. It is for them that the previously expressed desire may make sense, but in view of the duration of the disease, it may not ultimately be respected.
55. The interveners and the legislation contained in Section 36 (6) of the Health Services Act, under which "the previously expressed wish cannot be invoked if it is a minor or a patient deprived of legal capacity." In this case, the legislature's intention is completely lacking as to whether it is a wish made at the time when the patient has already been deprived of legal capacity and it can be assumed that this inaccuracy could be misused against the will of the patients. Given the ageing process and the deteriorating interpersonal relations, this error may affect an increasing number of people, which makes it a public concern.
56. Similarly, Article 35 of the Health Services Act, which makes it impossible for all patients deprived of legal capacity and for minors, regardless of age and maturity, to visit doctors without the consent of legal representatives, has a fundamental impact on the freedom of decision-making. While paragraph 1 provides for an obligation to establish the opinion of a minor patient who, in view of his age, is able to perceive the situation and express himself as well as of a patient deprived of legal capacity, this opinion shall only be recorded in the medical file without it being apparent what is relevant for his further treatment. This also applies to the possible recording of reasons for which his opinion could not be established.
57. By ignoring the de facto competence of minors to give consent to healthcare, the law has come into conflict with the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine, which states that, with the increasing age and degree of maturity of the minor, the binding of his opinion is increasing. This Convention, as well as point 45 of the explanatory report, states, inter alia, that the opinion of minors is to be regarded as a decisive factor whose importance increases in proportion to their age and degree of maturity. This means that, in certain situations where the nature and severity of the intervention, as well as the age of the minor and his ability to understand, are taken into account, the view of minors is to be increasingly attributed to the severity of the final decision making. This might even lead to the conclusion that the consent of a minor should be necessary or at least sufficient for certain procedures. The law is also contrary to the current and newly approved Civil Code, which grants minors the right to legal acts which, by their nature, are reasonable and free of maturity appropriate to their age. Also the Act No. 66 / 1986 Coll., on the artificial termination of pregnancy, allows the termination of pregnancy to a woman aged between 16 and 18, with her legal representative merely being informed of this procedure.
58. Another serious impact on the patient's fundamental right is the adjustment contained in Section 48 (1) and (2) of the Health Services Act. The provider may terminate the care of the patient, for example, if "the patient disagrees with the provision of all health services', which in itself is a very vague and misleading reason, especially in a situation where the reasons for the refusal to accept the patient or the termination of care are assessed by the provider. Although he must give the patient a written report on his reasons, the patient has no possibility of resisting such a decision, even if the doctor or provider is abused. In addition, cancer patients who, for certain reasons, do not want to receive all the treatment proposed are already in practice refused care. The contested law legalizes this unacceptable practice, thereby not only violating the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine, but also Articles 1, 4 and 7 (1) of the Charter. The dispute can also be concluded with the obligations of health workers under the relevant laws and with the content of the medical oath.
59. According to Section 50 (1) of the Health Services Act, a health worker may not provide health services even if the provision of such services would result in a direct threat to his or her life or a serious threat to his or her health. In addition to the fact that the patient is at risk of not being given medical care on time or at all, the approved treatment according to the interveners and the facts of the non-provision of assistance according to § 150 of the Criminal Code also meets the nature of the offence. In addition to the tolerance for exposure to the patient's deliberate risk of health risks, the law leads to the commission of a criminal offence. This is a significant legal and ethical breakthrough, which, moreover, the public has not been informed in advance, nor has there been any discussion on this planned regulation. To date, the healthcare provider has provided assistance regardless of its risk. For example, if health professionals refuse to help spread an unknown epidemic, saying that they could get infected and die, health care will not be provided at all, and thousands of people will die without help. However, the interveners also dispute Article 50 (2) of the Health Services Act, according to which the provision of health services may also be refused on grounds of conscience or religion. While every citizen has the right to choose his or her future profession completely freely, if he or she chooses health care, he or she does so knowing that his or her duty is to save people's lives at the expense of his or her own life. This includes the medical oath, the code of ethics of a doctor, adopted at the Congress of the Czech Medical Chamber, or the code of ethics of a medical professional of non-medical disciplines, published in the Journal of the Ministry of Health No. 7 / 2004. For example, under Section 2 of the Code of Ethics, doctors are required to provide emergency medical assistance in cases of life threats and immediate serious health threats, including in situations of public danger and disasters of a natural or other nature.
60. The interveners also draw attention to the non-compliance of the management of health documentation and the processing of patients' personal data with Articles 4 (1) and (4), 7 (1), 8 (1), 10 (1), (2), (3) and 13 of the Charter and Article 8 (1) of the Convention. In particular, Article 52 of the Health Services Act states that when processing personal data it allows the handling of the patient's birth number in his medical file and in the National Health Information System, provided that the collection or processing of data or their retention relates to a specific patient. In paragraphs 53 and 54, the method of processing and storage of medical documentation is dealt with in detail, however, without the obligation to protect documentation in paper form being treated in the slightest.
61. The health of citizens as well as compliance with Rule 31 Finally, Article 14 of the Health Services Act, which sets out the rights and obligations of the professional representative who manages the provision of health services in a relatively detailed manner. However, it is no longer clear what he is actually responsible for, or whether his expertise and responsibility relate to the provision of health services or the management of the provision of such services. Nor does the answer arise from paragraph 3 thereof, according to which the expert representative must perform his duties to the extent necessary for the proper management of the health services provided. The conflict is also based on the fact that a person can perform the functions of professional counsel for up to two providers. If, for example, two large hospitals had only one professional representative, that is, one person with a key service quality control function, the quality of healthcare provided would be seriously compromised.
62. In conclusion, the interveners formulate some general reservations about the law as a whole. They point out that there are inaccuracies in many places, which will not only lead to different interpretations, but may also form the basis for various serious illegal acts. The law denies the principles of legitimate expectation of a claim which has already been individualised by a legal act or which is individualised by legislation because it does not take into account the existing legal situation. Changes must be made sensitively and only to the extent necessary to achieve the objective of regulation, as this only guarantees the stability of the sphere of free action. Moreover, the law also contains discriminatory provisions. If the Charter grants everyone the right to life and to help in cases where he is unable to provide it himself, it is the duty of the democratic state and the health care system, which is financed by public health insurance, to receive appropriate care at the highest possible level. For all these reasons, the interveners propose to repeal the act as a whole or parts thereof concerned by their arguments.

III.

Observations of the parties and amicorum curiae
63. The Constitutional Court pursuant to Articles 42 (4) and 69 of Act No. 182 / 1993 Coll., on the Constitutional Court, as amended, has requested the parties to the proceedings, which are the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, to comment on all three proposals.
64. In view of the specificity of the issue, it also considered it appropriate to seek the opinions of other bodies on these proposals, which could, in view of their scope, give relevant facts and arguments. In particular, the Constitutional Court asked the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs and the Ombudsman to comment on the proposal to abolish the new legislation of the Public Service Institute, the Ministry of Health, the Czech Medical Chamber, the Czech Dental Chamber and the Czech Pharmacy Chamber on the proposal to repeal the Act on Health Services and the Office for the Protection of Personal Data on the Opposition concerning the new legislation of the National Health Information System. The Constitutional Court received the Prime Minister's opinion on the way in which the contested laws were adopted.

III./a

Observations of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate
65. The Chamber of Deputies, in its observations of 24 February 2012 and 29 March 2012, signed by its President, Miroslava Nemcová, and the Senate, in its observations of 21 February 2012 and 12 April 2012, signed by its President Milan Štěch, summarised the course of the legislative process in relation to all the contested laws or provisions.

III./b

Statement by the Prime Minister
66. On 27 February 2012, the Constitutional Court received the observations of Prime Minister RNDr. Petr Netime on the motion of a group of Members to repeal fourteen laws concerning the arguments of the appellants questioning the constitutionality of the procedure for their adoption. It follows from its contents that the Government submitted proposals for the contested laws to the Chamber of Deputies from 8 April 2011 to 30 June 2011. It is therefore clear that sufficient space has been given to discuss them in both chambers of Parliament, while respecting all the standard deadlines for the legislative process. The Government did not initiate the adoption of these laws at first reading or the negotiation of them in a state of legislative emergency and in a brief procedure. On the contrary, it acted in a way that suited the legislative process to all the requirements arising from the case law in which the Constitutional Court dealt with the role and position of the parliamentary opposition and certain principles governing the legislative procedures in both chambers of Parliament. A time-frame has therefore been established for the public debate on the proposals under discussion, as well as for their assessment and discussion in a proper, full and rational parliamentary discourse. The length of the legiskation period was also proportional to the extent and importance of the changes that the legislative proposals in question bring. The parliamentary debate on these laws could therefore fulfil its legitimacy function and all the notions of a proper, constitutionally consistent legislative process could be fulfilled.
67. He also stated that, after the bills were properly and in a standard manner discussed by the Chamber of Deputies, they re-entered the agenda as a result of the return or rejection by the Senate. It was no longer possible to change the content of the draft laws under Rule 97 of the Rules of Procedure, but it was only necessary to decide whether the proposals should really be adopted or whether they should be adopted in the wording of the specific Senate amendments adopted. It was only at this stage of the legislative process that the appellant challenged the merger of the debate and the limitation of speaking time in this debate. Contrary to the appellants, however, the Prime Minister considers that the merger of the debate took place in accordance with Rule 54 (8) of the Rules of Procedure of the Chamber of Deputies in a constitutional manner when this decision was adopted in the form of an autonomous procedural resolution of the Chamber of Deputies, which was rationally justified and adopted by the necessary number of votes. No coalition or opposition Member has been denied the opportunity to comment on the material at this stage of the discussion. Thus, by limiting speaking time to twice 10 minutes, there has been no significant breach of the fundamental principles of parliamentary politics, as the parliamentary discourse has actually taken place, even if it is at its level and content that can be different.
68. Parliamentary debate should not be self-effective, as its purpose is to exchange the views of Members or individual political factions on the issues currently being discussed in the parliamentary process. Such a rational discussion was the exchange of views on whether the Chamber of Deputies should accept the proposals at all, or whether it should do so in the wording that it has previously adopted, or in the wording of the amendments adopted by the Senate. While no Member can be denied the right to deviate from the content of the debate so rationally defined. However, if it does so, or if it chooses a obstructive approach, to which it also has the right, it is legitimate if the parliamentary majority makes appropriate use of the procedural instruments which the Rules of Procedure give it, while respecting the right of every Member to speak and express his or her opinion, not to allow a complete paralysis of the chamber's activities contrary to Parliament's mission as legislature. The assessment of the admissibility of obstructive measures is always a question of assessing proportionality and whether the rights of individual obstructing Members to participate in parliamentary debate or the right to protect the parliamentary minority as such have been respected.
69. In the context of the question of proportionality and the question of the assessment of the degree of "damage 'which was to be caused by the parliamentary opposition by the merger of the debate and the limitation of speaking time in this debate, the Constitutional Court referred to the arguments and conclusions reached in the assessment of the constitutionality of the ad hoc decision of the majority of the Senators at all to the draft law on the stabilisation of public budgets [cf. Part X / b of 31 January 2008 sp. zl. ÚS 24 / 07 (N 26 / 48 SbNU 303; 88 / 2008 Coll.)]. In a situation where the proposals either referred back by the Senate with amendments or the only vote on the proposals rejected by the Senate were discussed, the protection of the rights of the parliamentary opposition was fulfilled, therefore the appellants' objections to the legislative procedure are not justified in view of the possible determination of its unconstitutionality, and the appellants therefore did not bear the burden of proof of their unconstitutionality. At least for this reason, the proposal cannot be regarded as contradictory with the provision of Section 34 (1) of the Constitutional Court Act and therefore as ineligible for a meritorial hearing.

III./c

Expression of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs
70. The Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, Dr Ing. Jaromír Drábek, gave a detailed description of the reasons for which the Public Service Institute was anchored with effect from 1 January 2009 in § 18a of the Law on aid in material distress, as well as the experience of its use by municipalities. It can be summarised that the purpose of this institute was to promote the self-activity of persons in material need in solving their current life situation while at the same time helping all municipalities in the Czech Republic in their activities (e.g. improving the environment in the municipality, maintaining the cleanliness of the streets and other public areas). In addition to the incentive measures, the majority of municipalities which have set up a public service have done so after the system of assistance in a material emergency since July 2009 has been supplemented by sanctions to increase the activity of persons who receive more than six months' subsistence allowance and who are obliged to increase their income by their own work but do not develop them. The exercise of the public service was justified by the maintenance of the amount of this contribution over and above that period without reducing it to a minimum of life. But the main contribution of this institute was the activation of people in material need, which gained opportunities to establish new social ties and develop them further and to maintain or regain working habits. This also involves acquiring new knowledge, experience and skills that increase the chances of finding a permanent job.
71. The new legislation is based on experience with the current application of the Public Service Institute, with the aim of extending it also to jobseekers who are kept in the register of job seekers maintained by the employment office. The Ministry therefore worked with this institution and envisaged it as part of a comprehensive employment policy, or as an instrument enabling the reintegration of unemployed people into the labour process. The organisation of the public service was possible not only to municipalities but also to other entities, while the demonstration list of appropriate activities was maintained in its original form. In order to simplify the performance of administrative duties, its organisation has been transferred to the employment office or to its individual regional branches, including in the context of the integration of the agenda of insecurity social benefits under it. At the same time, an area has been created to increase the participation of the Labour Office in certain costs associated with the public service organisation.
72. In relation to the provisions of Paragraph 30 (2) (d) of the Employment Act, which the applicants also seek to abolish, he stressed that the reason for the removal of the candidate from the employment register by him is not the only reason, but the law also links such a consequence to other reasons (e.g. when he refuses to enter an appropriate employment facilitated by the employment office). Even in these cases, the jobseeker loses the right to unemployment benefit and is not covered by health insurance. In 2011 alone, for the above reasons, around 85 000 job seekers were excluded from employment records from the total of 657 000 registered ones. However, the employment office must always take account of any serious reasons for the candidate for employment for whom he could not fulfil his obligation. The above grounds of special consideration are listed in Section 5 (c) of that Law, and in the case of their existence (not recognition), exclusion from the employment records cannot take place. The first five reasons are clearly stated and easy to prove, such as childcare under the age of 4, dependent physical care or health reasons. However, at the last point where "other serious personal reasons' are referred to, a partial margin of administrative discretion is left to take account of possible facts that cannot be foreseen by the law and which usually lie in the person whose responsibilities, rights and claims are decided upon. It is therefore not true that those at particular risk on the labour market would be at risk of being excluded from employment records. On the contrary, these persons are particularly protected and the contested provision does not apply to them. The reasons included in Paragraph 5 (c) also fully cover circumstances beyond which a breach of the dignity of a person would be contrary to the requirement. If termination is due precisely to the refusal of a public service offer, a natural person may again apply to be entered in the register of jobseekers only six months after the date of withdrawal.
73. The application practice of the Public Service Office has been the following since 1 January 2012. The performance of the public service is offered to jobseekers as one of the activities under the individual action plan, which includes the establishment of a procedure and a timetable for the implementation of the individual measures aimed at increasing the possibility of applying the jobseeker to the labour market. Its other activities include, in particular, the processing of the CV and its offers through information systems of employment services, familiarisation with the techniques of seeking employment through the so-called jobs of clubs and other advisory programmes to obtain the technique of seeking employment, broadcasting into specific and non-specific retraining or securing employment in the framework of an active employment policy, including a socially efficient job. The individual action plan shall be drawn up taking into account the formal qualifications, health status, opportunities and competences of the candidate for employment involved in its preparation, with the aim of increasing the possibility of its application and its activation. It shall be drawn up whenever the tenderer is kept in the employment record for a continuous period of more than 5 months. However, from 1 January 2012, an individual action plan may be drawn up at the request of the tenderer even before the end of that period. It is also continuously updated, including an evaluation of the implementation of the measures contained therein and a proposal for further action.
74. The public service was never a mass matter, nor should it become such an instrument. For example, in 2010, the public service was performed on average by 11 400 people in a given month when the total number of unemployed persons was around 500 000. This means that less than 2,5% of registered unemployed persons were involved in the public service. Its performance has never been a condition for granting unemployment benefits. The refusal of a public service may lead to the exclusion from the register of applicants for employment, but it is one of many reasons, and in the case of other legal reasons, exclusion may take place at any time, i.e. within less than two months.
75. In terms of international comparison, the public service institute is not unique, including in respect of countries which are signatories to the international agreements listed by the applicants in their submissions. This also applies to economically and politically close countries of the Visegrad Group.
76. In many respects, tougher legislation was adopted in Hungary on 11 July 2011. The unemployed have the right to receive social benefits only for 90 days, while they must fulfil the conditions of participation in the public service programme for further income. This may include, for example, cleaning of public spaces, infrastructure building, but also manual work in the construction of stadiums or water works. In so doing, no account shall be taken of the distance between the place of work and the place of employment of the unemployed and the public service may also take the form of work for private operators. Refusal means losing the opportunity to receive any unemployment benefit and assistance in material distress. However, the exercise of the public service does not constitute a single condition for the further reception of benefits, but these include (with the same consequences of the infringement), for example, the obligation to keep the house or garden clean. This adjustment is functional in Hungary, although it has had some criticism from the left. Like domestic legislation, it is aimed at preventing the social exclusion of the unemployed.
77. In Poland, too, the legislation has similar characteristics to domestic legislation, since the employment office can order the unemployed to carry out public works (i.e. works organised and financed by public administration or by NGOs) for up to 12 months. If an unemployed person refuses to perform public work without a serious reason, he shall not be entitled to additional unemployment benefit. Polish treatment is not considered problematic and is fully functional.
78. In Slovakia, the current legislation is to a certain extent similar to the original domestic public service arrangements, effective until 31 December 2011. In fact, assistance in material distress has several components, of which all are essential, and only to those who perform public service. However, it follows from the expert's observations that the ratio of the basic amount of aid in material distress and the surcharge is unbalanced and therefore the whole adjustment is unsustainable in the long term. In particular, critics point out that the low level of the public service contribution effectively promotes passivity and unemployment, which means that a reduction in the basic amount of aid in material distress is planned up to a level that only covers the cost of one hot meal per day. The higher contribution will only apply to those unemployed who carry out the public service, thereby bringing the Slovak legislation into effective convergence with those of the above countries.
79. From other developed countries, it points to the solutions applied in Rotterdam, Netherlands, where a community service project was introduced for beneficiaries of social benefits. As with current legislation, the main idea is not forced to work, but to reintegrate the unemployed into working life and prevent social exclusion. In practice, the unemployed, who is interested in social benefits, must accept work with a private body subsidised for this purpose by the city. In the United Kingdom, again, a so-called mandatory work activity, which is carried out up to 30 hours a week, was introduced in 2011, and the refusal to participate also means the rejection of a contribution for jobseekers. Even earlier, Australia also introduced a similar system, where unemployed people had to work as volunteers for more than 6 months to qualify for social benefits. Other developed countries (e.g. Germany, France, Belgium, Austria or some United States of America) are considering introducing similar systems.
80. Finally, it cannot be forgotten that the Czech legislation is based on non-binding European Union documents, namely the Commission Recommendation of 3 October 2008 No 2008 / 867 / EC on the active inclusion of persons excluded from the labour market, according to which, in the framework of the strategy of active integration of jobseekers, the right to sufficient resources should be combined with active readiness to work or to participate in training for the purposes of obtaining employment in the case of persons whose situation makes this active readiness possible. The contested provisions also implement guidelines in accordance with Council Decision 2010 / 707 / EU of 21 October 2010 on guidelines for the employment policies of the Member States. Guideline 7 sets out, inter alia, the key character of the incentive to economic activity. Member States should therefore introduce adequate social security systems which clearly lay down the rights and obligations of the unemployed so as to actively seek work.
81. On the basis of that overview, the Minister therefore notes several global trends, which include the fact that unemployment is not to be paid and the right to social benefits is linked to labour market activity, which may also include public service obligations. They include the fact that public work prevents the social exclusion of the unemployed and has a positive effect on their staying in established social ties and on learning morally acceptable patterns of behaviour. In the end, each State can only provide social benefits corresponding to the degree of its economic capacity and capacity, including taking into account the current situation. These trends are also in line with the amended legislation, which is at its core merely a consistent implementation of the principle that social benefits belong to the socially needed, and not to those who do not want to work and rely on the social benefits system.
82. The subject of Act No. 435 / 2004 Coll., on Employment, as amended, (hereinafter referred to as the "Employment Act") is the provision of a state employment policy aimed at achieving full employment and protection against unemployment. In the case of the substantive emergency assistance law, the objective of providing assistance to ensure basic living conditions is to natural persons in material distress. The two laws in question must therefore be understood as directly implementing Articles 26 (3) and 30 (2) of the Charter, which contain rights which can only be invoked by law within the meaning of Article 41 of the Charter. The text of these articles contains principles which must be developed by law. Article 26 (3) This means that the legislature must lay down the conditions of a reasonable extent of the physical security of citizens who, without their fault, cannot obtain the means for their living needs through work, and, if he did not do so, or would impose conditions which are impossible or contrary to a constitutional principle, an unconstitutional state would arise. This also applies where conditions are laid down, the fulfilment of which would be accompanied by disproportionate procedures or which would have disproportionate (choking, liquidation) consequences. Similarly, Article 30 (2) of the Charter also provides for assistance which is necessary to ensure the basic living conditions of a person in material need. It is therefore clear that the legislator has a relatively "free field" to determine the conditions of physical and / or basic living conditions. Their scope and content may change very significantly over time, particularly in the light of economic and social developments in the country, and even the current unprecedented economic crisis cannot be overlooked in this context. The specific solution therefore depends primarily on the political preferences of the legislator, but it must not go beyond the basic constitutional framework, which is not the case with the legislation in question.
83. The legislature of the Public Service Institute was also confronted by the Minister with Article 28 of the Charter, according to which employees are entitled to a fair remuneration for their work and satisfactory working conditions, in view of the absence of remuneration for the performance of their public service. Article 28 The Charter does not explicitly determine what is to be regarded as remuneration, or it does not expressly provide that it is to be a cash remuneration, even if it is perhaps the most common and traditional form of remuneration for work. The contested provisions of the Employment Act do not deny applicants this right. The beneficiary will be paid a benefit if the statutory conditions are met, thus being provided by the State to ensure the basic living conditions. The Charter itself guarantees the right to pay for the work and is therefore a perfectly legitimate requirement that the payment of funds (money) be linked to the performance of a certain work, in the case of a public service. This structure is of course valid if we come from an extensive interpretation that even a registered job seeker is an employee within the meaning of Article 28 of the Charter. If this had not been the case, the registered tenderer would not have been the bearer of the basic right under this provision and the confrontation of Paragraph 18a (1) of the Law on aid in material distress in the part according to which the public service is not remunerated would not be necessary with that right. In any event, even Article 28 of the Charter does not provide for limits and further definitions for a law to set out details.
84. In contrast to the contested provisions with certain international legal documents, the Minister stated that the legislation under examination did not, in principle, affect the right to freedom of choice of employment as it aimed at completely different situations. It is used only where one has not earned more than two months' living from the freely chosen work. A grammatical and logical interpretation of the international conventions governing this right (cf. paragraph 23 of this finding) can be distinguished between the positive component of this right, which constitutes the right to freely seek employment, the sought employment freely to receive and work in it, and the negative component, which is the right to be unemployed. Both components correspond to the obligation of the State not to prevent people from seeking employment freely, to protect their employment relationship and their weaker contracting party (employees) and to pursue an active employment policy. In this context, he recalled that the maximum scope of the public service is set at 20 hours a week for the purposes of Paragraph 30 (2) (d) of the Employment Act, while the remaining time remains available to the jobseeker to exercise his right to seek employment freely if he wishes to use it. For comparison, it can be noted that a staff member who wishes to exercise his right to actively seek new employment has only one half a working day per week, at least five times less. The argument and maiori ad minus can be concluded that if a staff member whose employment is close to an end and thus lives in uncertainty about his future, it is enough 4 hours a week to exercise his described right, the more likely it is that the jobseeker is enough to exercise that right for 20 or more hours a week. It is therefore appropriate to conclude that the public service obligation does not affect the right to seek employment freely and to accept employment sought. The negative component of the right to free choice of employment is also not limited, as the candidate can at any time refuse the public service and voluntarily remain unemployed.
85. The contested provision of Paragraph 30 (2) (d) of the Employment Act may also be confronted with the prohibition of forced labour or services under Article 9 of the Charter and certain international legal documents. Their provisions contain, in particular, a negative definition of forced labour. Positive can only be found in Article 2 (a) which is enforced on any person under the threat of any penalty; and These conditions must be fulfilled simultaneously. In the absence of any other definition, it may also be made when assessing the conformity of the contested provisions with the prohibition of forced labour under international conventions.
86. In the present legislation, the first condition is no longer met as the public service is not enforced under a penalty. It is necessary to consistently distinguish the sentence as a penalty for an offence, offence or other administrative offence committed, consisting of the removal or restriction of an existing right or freedom (e.g. the right to personal freedom in respect of imprisonment, the right to own property in respect of a criminal offence, the right to conduct an activity in respect of a criminal offence) from the establishment of the conditions for entitlement to a social benefit, which is also applicable in the present case. Since the list of these conditions is exhaustive and understandable, each tenderer knows in advance what they must comply with for keeping in the register of jobseekers and for granting unemployment benefits. Therefore, the legislation in question is neither surprising nor giving rise to wide administrative discretion. At the same time, there is no evidence to suggest that the applicant should see exclusion from the employment record as injury. Applicants cannot be fined or similarly penalised as a result of this step, and therefore no material damage is caused by the withdrawal from the register. In this context, it will not stand up to the need to pay for health insurance itself, as this obligation also burdens people without taxable income. In the case of the unemployed, its payment by the State is a benefit. Nor can we talk about lost profits. The applicant knows in advance what conditions it must meet if it wishes to be kept in the register in question and receive unemployment benefit. The fact that it refuses to comply freely is a burden on it and is not a charge on third parties or perhaps a force majeure. Finally, the emergence of any non-material damage excludes the fact that it is in the capacity of the jobseeker to fulfil all these conditions and to obtain entitlement.
87. That argument can also be supplemented by the grammatical interpretation of Paragraph 30 of the Employment Act, which states that this provision clearly sets out the conditions which the breach of which leads to the exclusion of a person from the employment record by the Regional Office. The common feature of these conditions is that it is not fair to require that such a person be kept in the employment register at the Regional Branch of the Labour Office. However, this is not a penalty, but only the inevitable consequence of non-cooperation between a person who is kept in the register of jobseekers, as is the case in the case of non-compliance with other conditions, for example as a result of obstruction of the established synergies, withdrawal of consent to the provision of personal data, the performance of illegal work or the refusal of entry into an appropriate employment. It follows from the examples above that, if the conditions for keeping a worker's record are to be followed by a penalty, the legislator has quite rightly created the following facts of the infringement. But a refusal to perform a public service is not an offence. It can also be pointed out from the point of view of systematic interpretation that the provision in question is part of Title II of Part Two of the Employment Act, whereas offences and other administrative offences are covered entirely separately in Part Seven of that Act. The conclusion that failure to fulfil the conditions for granting a claim should be regarded as a penalty can be considered absurd.
88. However, the second of the conditions of forced labour cannot be considered to be fulfilled, namely the feature of involuntary labour. The legal basis for the performance of the public service is a written contract (i.e. a bilateral speech of will) concluded between a person in material need or a person registered as a candidate for employment and a regional branch of the employment office in agreement with a municipality or another body. It's up to a specific candidate whether or not he closes it. It is not relevant that the law links the non-conclusion of a contract of exclusion from the employment record. Although it can be accepted that the candidate's will to conclude the contract is not entirely free for this reason, there are many similar relations in our legal order, with the position of the parties being procedural equal, but the oferta is based on a more effective (particularly economically) position of the applicant. If we were to mark every job or service that is "forced" by the need to raise money, the forced work would probably be the overwhelming majority of all employment relationships that people enter primarily in order to earn money, or in the words of the Charter, "to obtain funds for their living needs." The contractual nature of the public service is clear from Section 18a of the Law on aid in material need, according to which the applicant has the opportunity to reject the offer. In view of this contractual freedom, the public service institute and its use as a condition for keeping the register of jobseekers in relation to Article 9 of the Charter cannot be considered unconstitutional.
89. The previous legal regulation of the Employment Act already knew in Paragraph 30 (2) the exclusion from the registration of jobseekers, for many reasons which do not differ, in substance or in consequence, from the contested provision. Thus, neither the public service institute nor the specified conditions for exclusion from the employment register have newly introduced the new legislation. It did not change the substance and the meaning of the provision in question, which is to allow the candidate to be excluded from the register in question, but set another ground for such exclusion. From a constitutional point of view, there is no fundamental difference between a refusal to enter an appropriate job or an agreed retraining, which was contested for inconstitutionality was not and is not, and a refusal to perform a public service under the law. The contested provision does not alter the quality adjustment, it adds only another condition for the exclusion from the register, which is neither impossible nor requiring disproportionate procedures from jobseekers. Nor can it be considered "choking 'within the meaning of the conclusions contained in the finding of 20 May 2008 sp. zn. The exercise of public service within the meaning of the contested provisions does not in any way impair the social status of individuals or persons close to them. The activity of registered jobseekers need not be covered by any financial or material resources.
90. For all the above reasons, it is clear that the public service is neither enforced under the threat of punishment nor involuntary work. However, it could not be regarded as forced labour even if it fulfilled those characteristics, as it would be covered by the exceptions provided for by the relevant international agreements. In particular, a public service would fall under an exception within the meaning of Article 4 (3) (c) of the Convention, according to which the prohibition of forced labour does not apply to services required in the event of an emergency or disaster affecting the welfare of the community. The current economic situation, characterised by considerable uncertainty and balance between several European countries on the verge of bankruptcy, has been quite unprecedented over the last 80 years, brings with it a state of economic emergency and threatens the welfare of the community. In this situation, the public service is a completely legitimate means of combating the economic crisis, as it was a legitimate means, for example, in the United States of America in the 1930s. Using entirely similar arguments, it can be concluded that the exemption provided for in Article 2 (2) (d) of the Convention on Forced or Compulsory Work is also fulfilled, as the current economic situation is an exceptional circumstance which threatens or may jeopardise the normal living conditions of all or part of the population.
91. Nor would the argument concerning Article 4 of the latter Convention, according to which it is prohibited to allow the imposition of forced labour for the benefit of private operators, be held. It cannot be confused for whom the public service is performed with the benefit of the public service. The article is aimed only at the fact that forced labour must not benefit private persons. The legislation under assessment is in line with this requirement, because the definition of a public service shows that it will benefit the whole community and not individuals when they all benefit from improved environment, clean streets and public spaces, developed culture and sport and high-quality social care. On the contrary, it is completely indecisive who the public service is being performed for. The assessment of whether the work is forced does not affect the fact that private operators take care of the environment or of the purity of the streets and public spaces on the basis of contracts concluded with the competent authorities. Moreover, in practice, the exercise of a public service for private operators is more a burden than a benefit, which is manifested, inter alia, by the fact that private entities providing a public service are subsidised by the State.
92. Finally, none of the prohibited forms of forced labour under Article 1 of the Convention on the Elimination of Forced Labour would be fulfilled. Forced work under Article 1 (b) of the Convention cannot be negotiated because the purpose is not economic development. In the current economic situation, the economic objective is to minimise the impact of the recession on a substantial part of the population, but the right purpose of the legislation under consideration has been to prevent social exclusion and help jobseekers. The second purpose is to improve quality in the areas of human activity for which the public service is intended. It is clear from the list set out in Section 18a of the Act on aid in material distress discussed above that these are areas of human activity in the public interest without direct economic impact. Nor is it forced labour within the meaning of Article 1 (c) of this Convention because it is not a means of labour discipline. In such a case, it would also have to be possible to impose a public service obligation against a person who does not want to perform it, in order to strengthen its labour discipline. However, the Act does not provide the Regional Branch of the Labour Office with the means to force a jobseeker who does not wish to perform the public service.
93. Nor is the right to adequate unemployment insurance provided for in the Convention on a Minimum Social Security Standard and the European Social Security Code given in a positive way. This right can be defined as the right of a protected person (or citizen according to the Charter code) to receive unemployment benefit if unemployment is caused by the inability to obtain adequate employment and the protected person is able and willing to work. According to the relevant provisions of the Employment Act, only a registered jobseeker is entitled to receive unemployment benefit, and any natural person who fulfils the statutory conditions is entitled to keep the register in question. An administrative decision must be taken by the Regional Branch of the Labour Office on the non-inclusion or exclusion from the register, thus also ensuring the possibility of recourse to appeals against it, including a possible review in the administrative judiciary. This legislation therefore complies with Article 70 (1) of that Convention and Article 69 (1) of the European Social Security Code.
94. Unemployed persons may be divided into three categories, namely (a) persons unable to work, (b) persons capable but unwilling to work, and (c) persons capable and willing to work, the documents cited obliging the signatory States to provide only the last group of persons for unemployment. Thus, the appellants' argument that the granting of unemployment benefit can only be limited for the reasons set out in Article 24 of the Convention on Minimum Social Security Standard and Article 23 of the European Social Security Code is not valid. Both of these contracts limit the scope of authorised protected persons by definition in their Article 20, which do not include the first two groups of persons mentioned above. This is also in line with the legislation of the Employment Act when persons unable to work are not included in the register of jobseekers and are protected from social exclusion and material distress by benefits other than unemployment benefits. In the case of persons who are able but unwilling to work, domestic legislation allows for exclusion from the register by administrative decision after their reluctance to work becomes apparent. If one of the "recognizable" features of this reluctance is to refuse entry into an appropriate employment, it can be concluded, using an argument and it can be concluded, that a similar constitutional character is also the rejection of the public service offer. The features for which the jobseeker regards the offer of an appropriate job in a similar way to the offer of a public service, are more. The public service is reminiscent of part-time employment and will receive a remuneration, albeit in the form of a social benefit. On the contrary, the third group, which is capable and willing to work, is protected by Article 20 of both international treaties. These persons are also properly and reasonably kept in the employment register under Czech law and entitled to receive unemployment benefit.
95. The termination of the payment of unemployment benefit on the basis of the refusal to perform the public service is foreseen in Article 69 (g) of the Convention on Minimum Social Security Standard and Article 68 (g) of the European Social Security Code. According to those provisions, the benefit to which the protected person would be entitled may be suspended if the person concerned is unaware of the rules governing the behaviour of the recipients of benefits without any limitation on the content of those rules. Based on the fact that the benefit is only for those able and willing to work, it can be concluded that the behaviour of the recipient of the benefit by imposing a public service obligation to a limited extent is entirely conformal.
96. Finally, the contested regulation cannot be ruled out in the light of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. The Convention contains a ban on slavery and forced labour in Article 4 thereof, but no case has yet been dealt with that is of a type similar to a public service institute. Since the Charter does not deviate significantly from the way in which the prohibition in question is formulated at the level of the Convention, it can be concluded that the above conclusions will also apply to it. However, here too, the public service does not fulfil the signs of forced labour.
97. The European Court of Human Rights has in the past judged that by violating Article 4 The Convention is not the exercise of an obligation relating to a particular profession, the performance of which the complainant has chosen and knew about the context in question, unless it is a duty manifestly entirely non-discriminatory in relation to the nature of the profession in question (cf. Van der Mussel v Belgium). To this end, it should be noted that this case does not apply to the Institute under assessment in a type of way, as it concerned the employee and not the candidate. However, if we take the basic general rule on the fact that the obligation is not to be clearly non-discriminatory, this is not the case, or it cannot be seen as a "choking effect." In other decisions, that court stated that any work or service which is required under a threat of punishment and which is not carried out by an individual of its own volition (e.g. the judgment of 26 July 2005 on the complaint by Siliadin against France No 73316 / 01, paragraph 116) was to be regarded as forced or compulsory work. Consequently, the complainant's consent is generally a fact excluding the existence of coercion and thus a breach of Article 4 of the Convention. However, this must not be a situation where the complainant's consent to a particular activity, given the importance of the fact, is de facto unavoidable for him himself, that is to say, where he essentially has to agree. However, in the case of a public service it has already been stated that the contractual freedom of the jobseekers to whom the public service offer has been made is not limited. Nor can it be argued that this could be an authoritarian introduction of a public service obligation by public authorities under the law, because the jobseeker does not in any way have such an obligation.
98. Nor can any other case-law conclusion of the European Court of Human Rights, according to which the abuse of the distress of a person is inadmissible in order to force it to pursue an activity which it would not voluntarily carry out under the circumstances. The law states a very wide range of serious reasons which allow the public service offer to be rejected without any further effects. As has already been detailed above, the scope and nature of serious reasons fully correspond to the need to protect the dignity of each individual. Nor can this be an abuse of distress, because the scope of the public service work is very broad. The media simplification that this is a "street sweep" is not based on the truth. Works of a variety are offered, including work in libraries and work within social care facilities. Finally, the last reason is the absence of distress as such, because, as has already been detailed, the exclusion from the employment record does not actually have a "choking effect." The consequences do not deviate from what another person without income has to deal with, for example, a businessman who does not have contracts during the period or, for example, a household parent. The Institute under examination for Article 4 Nor does the Convention deviate from establishing conditions for degrading. It can therefore be concluded that the contested provisions are neither contrary to that Convention nor violate the principles expressed in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights.

III./d

The Ombudsman's observations
99. In his opinion of 7 September 2012, the Ombudsman JUDr. Pavel Varvařovský draws attention to the content of the Press Report of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs dated 13 December 2011, according to which the public service was initially to be offered to persons in material need and are also kept in the employment register for more than one year. Subsequently, the employment office was to offer public service and job seekers who are not in material need and are registered for more than one year, and at the same time those who have been kept in the register of job seekers in total for more than one year over the last three years. This means that the public service may also cover persons for whom the State "only 'pays health insurance but who do not receive unemployment benefit or benefits. At the same time, these persons must also fulfil a number of other obligations, such as to appear regularly within the prescribed time limit for the employment office, to actively seek employment, to participate in the selection procedure, to obtain a specific position of a recommendation from the employment office, or to fulfil an individual action plan. A group of persons with" unemployment for more than one year in the last three years' includes a number of applicants who are to be treated more closely for their health, age, childcare or other serious reasons (persons over 55 years of age, disability, persons on parental leave). In this context, it can be emphasised that the length of the registration itself cannot be considered without further prejudice to the risk of loss of working habits. In addition, the contested legislation allows the public service to be offered without further registration after two months, with the failure to accept it resulting in the penalty elimination of the tenderer. In the case of such short registration, the public service may be offered to anyone who expects, for the first time in his life, to assist the State in the loss of employment (especially in times of economic crisis), often after the long-term payment of social insurance. The legislation itself (as evidenced by the repeatedly amended methodological guidelines) allows the State to proceed unexpectedly towards the individual and to establish, without reasonable justification, additional conditions for access to social assistance provided on the basis of social insurance.
100. Following the adoption of the contested provisions, the Ombudsman received several dozen complaints concerning the performance of the public service. From the cases of persons who have turned to him, all evidence suggests that the legislation in question could infringe the Charter's guaranteed right to fair pay for work, adequate physical security, or even a ban on forced labour. Nor can the declared purpose of the public service, which is the possibility of preserving or developing the skills and skills of persons who do not have a permanent job in the long term and who have objective or subjective problems with finding a corresponding job, since this purpose is not actually fulfilled in practice. The common denominator of the complaints in question identifies the opposition to the new concept of public service as such, in particular for its free performance. The complainants often state that they do not currently receive or receive any social benefits and that the performance of the public service is financially burdensome for them because they have to pay, for example, the fare to the place of work. The public service also does not constitute an increase in care which, for some people, should be devoted to the mediation of employment, for example because of their health, age, childcare or other serious reasons. On the contrary, applicants are often affected by their dignity if they are to perform, for example, cleaning work, even if they can contribute to skilled work through their education.
101. To illustrate the real impact of the application of the contested provisions, the Ombudsman summarises briefly the content of some of the complaints received. The individual complainants point out that, in the context of the public service, work which is unnecessary is being carried out and, on the contrary, other employment policy instruments, such as grants for job creation, are not effectively used. Public service offers shall not take into account the specific circumstances of individual applicants, such as the care of relatives or their qualifications. In addition, applicants have to pay themselves the related costs, typically for travel. In contrast to human dignity, some complainants also consider that, in the performance of the public service, applicants are forced to bear the marking of a reflective vest on which it says "large VS and number '.
102. Finally, its position on the current form of public service is rejected. In particular, it considers it highly controversial to have created a "preventive 'system, which also affects people whose only problem in the labour market is age, parenthood, and so on. The major problem is also seen in the breach of the insurance principle on which the unemployment support system is built. In fact, the State is actually forcing duly insured persons to continue to" work out "in the event of an insurance event (loss of employment).
103. On 14 November 2012, the Constitutional Court received an additional opinion from the Ombudsman pointing to a very strong regulation of the Public Service Institute in § 30 (2) (d) of the Employment Act and § 18a of the Law on aid in material distress. The above provisions do not contain any specific conditions for the work of the public service office, which can be demonstrated by the fact that there are no clear rules to whom, under which conditions and what work is to be offered or what the maximum duration of the public service may be. Thus, de facto free thinking of the employment office creates scope for a wide range of interference in the rights of the addressees of the public administration, since the actual practice of the employment office is becoming unpredictable for them, and can logically bear the signs of pleasure. For this reason, the Constitutional Court should also assess the contested legislation in the light of Article 2 (3) of the Constitution and Article 2 (2) of the Charter, which require the State authority to have a clearly defined competence and competence. In the remainder of its supplementary statement, it refers to other examples which are intended to indicate the difficulty of requesting the public service offer. All of them were persons who did not receive unemployment benefits or benefits in material need.

III./e

Expression of the Ministry of Health
104. Minister of Health, Dr. Leoš Heger, CSc., responded to the arguments put forward by the appellants and the two interveners, which were justified by their proposal to repeal certain provisions of the Health Services Act, by statements of 22 February 2012 and 26 April 2012. First of all, he noted that the subject of the cancellation proposals is the basic and core law, which will be administered in the next decades by Czech health care and which monitors the provision of quality and safe health care provided at the appropriate level to all patients in the Czech Republic. This reform and modern law unifies the still fragmented and countless amended legislation contained in legislation not only the force of the law, but also in a number of implementing regulations whose binding obligations have been discussed. At the same time, for the first time in history, the conditions for providing health services for all providers are united indiscriminately.

III./ea

Obligation of new registration pursuant to § 121 (1) and (5) of the Health Services Act
105. Article 121 (1) and (5) of the Health Services Act provides sufficient time for bodies whose legal status is governed by the existing legislation to create conditions for adapting to the new legislation. At the same time, it ensures that all recipients of legal regulations are guaranteed that, after a reasonable transitional period, new and up-to-date needs and possibilities of modern medicine will meet the conditions and requirements of all those who intend to continue to provide health services in our health care system. The chosen solution fully respects, by the Constitutional Court, the repeatedly declared prohibition of genuine retroactivity and the general admissibility of retroactivity of improper activity, which is a necessary principle in each rule of law governing the relationship between earlier and subsequent legal standards. If the appellants refer to "inadmissible retroactive intervention in acquired rights', in the present case, only elements corresponding to the retroactivity of improper, which consists in applying new conditions to legal relationships arising from the arrangements previously in force, but new legislation repealed or amended. The new terms and conditions will apply to existing legal relations only after the entry into force of the new law, with a sufficiently long (three-year) period of time to enable them to respond to and adapt their activities to the operators of non-state health care facilities or to decide to terminate their activities.
106. If the current operators are assessed for continuing their activities, they may apply for authorisation within nine months of the date of application of the Health Services Act, and it shall be sufficient to demonstrate only the elements of the application for authorisation under Section 18 (1) of the Health Services Act. The decision will be given to them by 1 April 2015 at the latest so that they can continue to provide health services without interruption and without restriction, fully under the new legislation.
107. The Minister does not consider the demonstration of these elements to be extensive and their acquisition is not linked to specific difficulties, therefore it cannot be regarded as an administrative burden. In practice, providers - natural persons will be involved in the presentation of data of the type of name and surname, nationality, address of permanent residence and date and place of birth of the applicant (s), identification number, if assigned, identification of the professional representative, if required, form, disciplines and types of health care which the applicant intends to provide, address of the place or places of provision of health services or the period during which the applicant intends to provide health services, if the authorisation is to be granted only for a specified period of time. Analogue information is then reported by providers - legal entities. In other words, it is the most necessary range of data that can still be required in order to allow for a smooth transition of existing registrations of health care facilities to the authorisation of the provision of health services. A smaller range of data could not achieve this objective. At the same time, it is not true that health-care operators would have to submit evidence of professional or specialised competence or of compliance with the conditions of the establishment's material and technical equipment. It is possible to refer here to the explicit wording of Section 121 (5) of the Health Services Act, as well as to Section 18 (1) of that Act.
108. There is also nothing to prevent existing health service operators from applying for authorisation to provide health services fully under the Health Services Act, without limitation, i.e. not within the meaning of the contested transitional provisions. The administrative procedure thus opened would be governed by the Health Services Act and the Administrative Code in full. It is therefore up to the current health care operators to decide which legal path they will take. The Health Services Act offers them several options, although without exception requires that, from 1 April 2015, anyone intending to provide health services meet the requirements laid down by it for this activity and maintain the level of health services set by it, as can be expected in a modern legal state.
109. The adopted solution to the transition of old and new legislation is nothing new in the Czech legal order, unusual, unexpected or unpredictable, and it is sufficient to point out, for example, the transitional provisions of the Act on the Protection of Public Health, Trade Act and its amendments, the Commercial Code and its amendments, etc.
110. As regards the appellants' objections that the new legislation will retroactively interfere with the acquired specialised competences of doctors under Act No 95 / 2004 Coll., it remains irrelevant, given the subject matter of the review of the contested provisions of the Health Services Act, as defined by the petitions themselves. In fact, they are directed not against the contested law but against the first law, which has been effective since 2 April 2004. However, since the appellants did not propose the repeal of certain provisions of this law, neither can the Constitutional Court examine its constitutionality in this procedure. Nevertheless, the Minister considered it appropriate to comment on these objections.
111. In the first place, the applicants neglected to distinguish between the person of an operator of a non-state health care facility or a new health service provider, which may be a natural (not necessarily a doctor) or a legal person, and a doctor who carries out medical procedures and directly carries out health care in the fields listed in the registration or newly authorised to provide health services. In this respect, the doctor is a person of so-called professional competence, or according to the Health Services Act, an expert representative. The status of the operator cannot be mixed with that of the doctor who is its employee. Of course, it is not impossible for the same natural person to be an operator, or a provider, or a professional representative at the same time, but the contested transitional provisions apply only to operators, not to doctors and their specialised competence, which is a necessary condition for the independent pursuit of the profession of doctor. This is governed by the rules laid down by Act No 95 / 2004 Coll., whether in the transitional provisions of § 44, which are currently, i.e. more than seven years after the Act is effective, essentially consumed (except for amendments which have brought some new transitional provisions) or in other regular parts of the Act. The appellants are particularly opposed to these transitional provisions, thereby effectively impeding the position of the part of doctors who wish to pursue the profession of doctor in fields for which they do not have specialised competence. However, they no longer give any relevant reason why such a benefit should be granted to them. Such a request would, after more than seven years of the effectiveness of the Act, create unfounded differences between doctors; an established system of specialisation education, including universities, faculty hospitals, accredited workplaces, as well as the structure of specialisation training courses, which arose in close cooperation with specialist medical firms, would be undermined. Nor does the example given to the appellant according to the Minister reflect the current legal status, since Act No. 346 / 2011 Coll., amending Act No. 95 / 2004 Coll., on the conditions for obtaining and recognising professional competence and specialised competence for the exercise of the medical profession of a physician, dental practitioner and pharmacist, as amended, and Act No. 96 / 2004 Coll., on the conditions for obtaining and recognising fitness for the exercise of non-medical medical professions and for carrying out activities related to the provision of medical care and on the modification of certain related laws (Law on non-medical medical professions), as amended, and on doctors who, according to the earlier regulations, have acquired grade I. degree in the basic field and licence of the Czech Medical Chamber for the exercise of private practice in another field of specialisation, have granted specialised in this other field (e.g. in cardiology, as described in the proposal).
112. It can therefore be concluded that those doctors who do not yet have specialised competence in the field in which they wish to provide healthcare themselves cannot legally provide such care, and that the provisions of Section 121 (1) and (5) of the Health Services Act and of this Act as a whole do not alter this fact. Therefore, it cannot be accepted that the contested provisions are retroactive and interfere with the rights previously acquired.

III./eb

New legislation of the National Health Information System
113. On the objection to the non-constitutionality of the legislation of the National Health Information System under Sections 70 to 78 of the Health Services Act, the Minister stated that it was not a completely new database, but an information system following the legislation contained in Section 67c of the People's Health Care Act. The new legislation, as was the case with the previous legislation, is supplemented by an annex to the Act which lists the various components of the system - registers.
114. When creating the contested provisions, care was taken of the right to information self-determination in the sense of the finding of 22 March 2011 sp. zn. Pl. ÚS 24 / 10 (N 52 / 60 SbNU 625; 94 / 2011 Coll.), as well as of the international obligations of the Czech Republic, in particular the Convention on the Protection of Persons with regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data (Council of Europe Convention No 108), published under No 115 / 2001 Coll., and the relevant decision-making practice of the European Court of Human Rights or the Office for the Protection of Personal Data. The new and existing legislation, which constituted the legal framework for the processing of personal data in the field of health, fully respects the requirement of Act No. 101 / 2000 Coll., on the protection of personal data and on the amendment of certain laws, as amended, (hereinafter referred to as the "Personal Data Protection Act ') that personal data, if not processed with the consent of the data subject, be processed only if a separate law so provides. The Ministry of Health was also aware that the mere statutory framework for the processing of personal data was not sufficient, but that the processing of such data had to be necessary, justified, effective, logical and defensible if the justification of such processing was subjected to a test of the adequacy of the intervention into the individual's personal and personality sphere, which is directly under the protection of constitutional standards. In this context, it can be noted that the new legislation of the National Health Information System is rational and justified in relation to the objectives pursued, which are defined, on the one hand, in general in § 70 (1) and, as regards the registers themselves, in § 73 (1) (a) to (f) of the Health Services Act. It is not so true that the purpose of this system and the registers themselves is vague or all-inclusive. The legislation complies with the criteria for the protection of personal data in the interveners referred to in Directive 95 / 46 / EC of the European Parliament and of the Council, namely the requirement of a clear and explicit purpose for the processing of personal data.
115. In addition to the purpose of the National Health Information System, the Health Services Act also describes in detail who (§ 70 (1) and (2), § 74 (1), § 76 (1), Annex (1)) and when data are anonymized (Annex) or who has access to data not intended for publication (§ 73 (2)). There is no treatment other than that provided for therein. As regards the technical security of this system, it is doubtful whether this aspect can be reviewed at all in the abstract control of standards when it is not a question of legal or legislative law, but of substance. The functionality of the technical security of the National Health Information System can only be checked when it is used and implemented in practice. The current system is impeccable from this point of view, and the Minister expects the same result for the newly implemented system, as it will not be set in any way other than the previous system. Moreover, it will be more sophisticated and with stricter data protection. The implementing legislation, which provides for the provision of Section 78 of the Health Services Act, will be issued subsequently to the Law on the Issues of Health Registers, adjusting the technical issues associated with the implementation and administration of these Registers.
116. The interveners also object to two of the nine registers that the Health Services Act provides, namely the Health Workers Register and the Health Service Providers Register. In their defence, the Minister recalls their purpose of providing (a) the public with information on the entitlement to the health profession and qualifications of health professionals, (b) information on the number and composition of health professionals in terms of demographic (age, gender) characteristics and professional, qualification criteria (achieved competence) in relation to the activity (provider, category), (c) data for international statistics (e.g. Eurostat, Directorate-General for Health and Consumer Protection, World Health Organisation, Organisation for European Cooperation and Development) on personnel capacity, (d) information and documentation for planning, decision-making and prediction of the number of staff in relation to population, admission to pre-graduate and post-graduate education, specialisation courses.
117. A certain extension for the purposes of registries is their benefit to the patient, who, based on the data from these two public registers, will be able to better orient himself in the diversity of the health services that are or can be provided to him, to choose the health service providers in their vicinity, including the possibility to evaluate such providers by doctors and non-medical health professionals who carry out such services with a particular provider. With this possibility, the law tries to significantly assist the patient in exercising the right to choose a health service provider under Section 28 (3) of the Health Services Act, namely where, how and by whom it can be interfered with as an integral and essential component of the personality of each human being. The contested registers also implement Directive 2011 / 24 / EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 9 March 2011 on the application of patients' rights in cross-border healthcare (cf. Article 4 of this Directive).
118. That right should not be in the way of the unfounded views of the interveners that the collection and the public of data on where a specific doctor has acquired his or her expertise, whether he or she has lost his or her ability to pursue a health profession is an unjustified interference with the right of such persons to protect their personality or to protect personal data. Paragraph 13 of the Health Services Act explicitly states under which conditions a person is not considered to be righteous for his or her purposes. These are conditions which are proportionate to the purpose pursued, where the person who committed the offence intentionally and was sentenced to an unconditional prison sentence of at least one year or the person who committed the offence in the provision of health services.
119. On the objection of duplicity of registers about health professionals, the Minister states that there is currently no uniform registration of all health professionals performing or capable of carrying out the health profession in the Czech Republic. There are only partial records, such as a registry of health professionals eligible for the medical profession without professional supervision and visiting persons, which is part of the existing National Health Information Register under the Law on non-medical health professions. This register includes medical professionals of non-medical medical professions certified in accordance with Title VI of the Act cited and visiting persons, but does not contain medical, dental or pharmaceutical records. The register is publicly available with the exception of data on birth and permanent residence, but it lacks a number of newly requested functions, particularly for statistical monitoring purposes, since it is legally based for a different purpose. The constitutionality of this register has not yet been questioned. It also summarises that in the Register of Doctors, Dentists and pharmacists under the People's Health Care Act, the personal data required for the identification of a physician, dental practitioner, pharmacist (birth number, title), educational and specialisation data are processed, the data required for the identification of a medical institution to which a doctor, dentist or pharmacist has a working or similar ratio (organisation identification number, department name) and time.
120. These registers are not interconnected today and each is monitoring partially identical and different types of data, which has no objective and rational reason. It is also not justified to distinguish health professionals from one another according to whether they pursue a medical or non-medical profession. Therefore, the data on these are the same in the Health Services Act, unless the nature of the matter prevents it. Another reason for register management is the task of the Ministry of Health, in cooperation with universities, chambers and specialist companies, to determine the number of residences and to calculate the expected costs of specialist training and the task of ensuring an overview of the number of staff with professional, specialised and specific competence who carry out the medical profession in the Czech Republic. Information obtained from registers also serves to make effective use of funds intended to educate health professions in the labour market. The reasons, purposes or intentions of the health registers described above, which are reflected in the text of the Health Services Act, do not monitor and cannot comply with the medical records under Act No. 220 / 1991 Coll., which is a mere list of chamber members without the necessary data. The Minister submitted a detailed description of the purpose and functioning of each registry in the Annex for his comments.
121. The possible abolition of the contested legislation of the National Health Information System would at least result in a permanent loss of all health statistics of the health department on the health status of the population, which has been operating here since the so-called First Republic, as well as interference with the national statistical service (e.g. abortion data are source data for state statistics on demographic development of the Czech Statistical Office). The loss of many decades of data collected, including the possibility of confronting other countries of Europe and the world, can also be described as incalculable. The information from the registries is used for long-term monitoring and analysis of the occurrence of monitored diseases and treatments in the Czech Republic, with the data found being processed in epidemiological studies and serving medical research. At the same time, the functionality of other registers would be impaired when, for example, the National Register of Providers is registered as the so-called Agenda Resort Register in relation to basic registers under Act 111 / 2009 Coll., on basic registers, as amended, and as a result of its abolition, the function of such registers as one of the tools for reducing administrative burden and delaying public administration. The fulfilment of international obligations towards international organisations would also be hampered.
122. The creation of health registers is undoubtedly an intervention in the constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy and confidentiality of personal data within the meaning of Article 10 (3) of the Charter, but this is an intervention admissible. In addition to the above legal and legitimate objectives, there is also a constitutionally challenged interest in the existence of a legitimate collection of personal data, which is in a competitive relationship in relation to the human law in which it is affected. On the one hand, the right to health protection enshrined in Article 31 of the Charter, the public interest in the protection of public health as a public good and, at international level, the obligations arising from the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine, on the other hand, the right against unauthorised interference in the personal sphere of an individual in the form of protection against unauthorised collection, disclosure or other misuse of data. The Minister considers that the contested legislation reflects not only that public interest in the protection of public health but also indirectly protects the right of specific people to health protection (e.g. the National Register of People Excluded from Blood Donation or the National Register of Occupational Diseases). The above-mentioned sense of processing of personal data and the constitutionally challenged interests of the company justify, in accordance with the requirements of Article 10 (3) of the Charter, the effectiveness and legitimacy of the management of health information systems, which are covered by the National Health Information System.

III./ec

Definition of certain administrative offences under the Health Services Act
123. A group of senators also attacked some of the administrative offences introduced by the Health Services Act, in principle those with whom the highest penalty is up to CZK 1 000 000. It is precisely the amount of the penalty, whose upper limit is considered to be ipso facto unconstitutional, that is to say, in conjunction with the alleged vagueness of the legal expression of the character of the facts of the contested administrative offences as the main reason for the unconstitutional nature. In this context, the Minister notes that the interveners themselves are relativising the seriousness and justification of their arguments, since they claim that "it is not the role of the Constitutional Court to examine the amount of individual penalties for individual administrative offences or infringements, as provided for by the legislature, as well as the fact that the law only sets the upper limit of those sanctions and, in accordance with the principle of proportionality, the administrative discretion will be to choose a penalty proportionate to the wrongdoing of which the health service provider in the situation in which the infringement took place ', and refer to the role of the case and practice in applying new legal rules containing the facts of administrative penalties. It adds to this view and notes that it fully reflects its position as well as the views of the Constitutional Court expressed, for example, in the decision of 25 October 2011 sp. zn. In the case of the contested provisions, there are no exceptions from the limits in which the legislature can move in the formation of criminal provisions of the law, which is sufficient to point out, for example, that the facts of administrative offences are clear, understandable and specific, the rate of fines does not have a lower limit, there are liberal reasons in place, and not every infringement of the legal obligation is an administrative delicacy.
124. Penalties for individual administrative offenses may be considered adequate and meet their preventive and repressive functions. The law only contains an upper limit on the penalty rate for administrative offences when the specific amount of the penalty is set only when it is imposed on an ad hoc basis in a specific procedure, while respecting all the principles of the imposition of sanctions, such as legitimate expectations or the imposition of entirely liquidation sanctions. The legal range of the fine rate for administrative offences was determined by law so that, in a particular administrative procedure, the competent administrative authority could impose a fine on a specific infringement of the law at a level which would discourage or directly deter it from repeating the infringement, as well as any other infringer, while at the same time actually and truly feeling it as an injury for the infringement. The range of penalty rates for administrative offences is consistent with the fact that the structure, character, property ratios, profit levels or size of health service providers is very broad. It is clear that the amount of CZK 10,000 will have a different effect on a large hospital and another on a so-called practitioner with one establishment. Therefore, the lower limit of the fine is not introduced, but only the upper limit.
125. The illegality of a particular person's behaviour is always the same whether it is committed by a "small 'or" large' health service provider. The degree of intervention in the legally protected interest is then reflected in the assessment of the intensity of the performance of the nature of the offence by the administrative authority and in particular at the level of the penalty imposed. Since the law provides for a wide range of sanctions, the administrative authority may fully apply the individualisation of the sentence in a specific procedure to a specific infringement. Such legislation is meaningful and pursues the purpose of actually punishing those who act illegally and leading them not to repeat such action. The interveners merely refer to Article 4 (4) of the Charter without indicating which fundamental right should be affected by the contested legislation in its sense and substance. In so doing, that provision cannot be infringed simply by establishing the scope of the penalty for an administrative offence.
126. As regards the examples given by the interveners, which seek to demonstrate the ambiguity and vagueness of the statement of objective aspects of administrative offences and the inadequacy of the penalties for them, the Minister has limited itself to finding that, in the abstract control procedure, the Constitutional Court, according to its established practice, is dealing with the constitutionality of the regulation in terms of its generality and normative nature, and not with the fictional eventuality and examples which, if any, would be dealt with according to the circumstances of the case, while maintaining the possibility of judicial review of administrative decisions. In the case of those interveners, according to which a breach of the obligation of confidentiality, which constitutes an administrative offence under § 117 (3) (d) of the Health Services Act, may, in certain circumstances, be a criminal offence for the unauthorised treatment of personal data under § 180 of the Criminal Code, but notes that the double-rail penalty for infringements of criminal and administrative law is common and common in the Czech law, and its illegality has not yet been established. It is not particularly difficult for law enforcement and administrative authorities to recognise the difference in the intensity of the conduct which may be both criminal and administrative delicacy, so there is no reason to expect problems even when applying these provisions.

III./ed

Newly introduced term "health services"
127. The group of Members, which has the status of intervener in this proceedings, takes the view that the newly introduced term headed by the term "health service" contradicts constitutional order, as the Constitution and the Charter speak of health care. The Minister regards the creation of a conceptual apparatus in the Health Services Act not only as a completely common legislative technique, but above all sees it as a means for a clear and unambiguous understanding of the Health Services Act by all its addressees. One of its core concepts is the 'health service'. It follows from its definition of Article 2 (2) and (3) of the Health Services Act that the Act does not resign from the concept of health care with which the laws of constitutional order work (Article 31 of the Charter), but integrates it into the broader concept of health services [cf. § 2 (2) (a) of the Health Services Act], when health services are, inter alia, the provision of health care by health professionals. Health care is defined as another of the core concepts of the Health Services Act in its § 2 (4), its species and forms in § 5 to 10.
128. Such a procedure is supported by Article 41 (1) of the Charter, according to which the rights under Article 31 of the Charter can only be invoked within the limits of implementing laws, which also implies the distribution of the concept of health care while maintaining its constitutional dimension, substance and meaning under Article 4 (4) of the Charter. At the same time, neither the Charter nor other constitutional regulations prohibit nor dictate in what forms and how the concepts and institutes introduced therein can be distributed in individual laws or even create new concepts. Among these newly introduced concepts are the term "health service," which can be considered not only to be possible and admissible in relation to constitutional order but also to be concise. The address of the Health Services Act, which is primarily a patient, is already given basic information in the first provisions of the Act that health care is a service. The patient's status in all the new laws constituting so-called health reform is strengthened, which was reflected in the chosen term as the basis for health reform, on the one hand, as regards the content (specific definition) of the concept of "health service 'in § 2 (2) and (4) of the Health Services Act and, on the other hand, in terms of grammatical and linguistic choice of the word" service'.

III./ee

Provision of health services at the appropriate professional level within the meaning of Section 28 (2) in conjunction with Section 4 (5) of the Health Services Act
129. On the objection to the non-constitutionality of Paragraph 28 (2) in conjunction with Article 4 (5) of the Health Services Act, the Minister stated that the right to the provision of health services at the appropriate professional level under those provisions is closer than the right to health care provided in accordance with the current available knowledge of medical science within the meaning of Article 11 (1) of the People's Health Care Act, the Minister stated that the fundamental right to health, hence health and life, is protected primarily by constitutional law and is not and has not been based on the latter legal provision. In addition to the infringement, the interveners do not provide any other provision to be infringed or restricted by the newly defined patient law. As mentioned above, the Charter itself envisages that the laws transposing Article 31 of the Act further elaborate and define what health care and health care is covered by public health insurance. Paragraph 28 (2) of the Health Services Act provides for the right of the patient to provide health services at the appropriate professional level. This expertise is linked to the rules of science, recognised medical procedures, patient individuality and specific conditions and objective possibilities.
130. In the opinion of the Minister, the rules of science are independent of the specific wording of the law or the expression of the patient's claim to health services in the legal standard, can be described as objective, empirically proven and verified, and their use to define the patient's right to provide health services is an expression of the position that the patient can only be treated by such procedures as are verified, and there is a consensus among experts. Accepted medical procedures are actually a reflection of the mentioned rules of science, namely their specificity on the one hand and their extension on the other, as regards medical work tested and tested procedures, performances etc. The two concepts are logically part of what is usually understood below the appropriate professional level.
131. Health services cannot be provided differently than always and only in the custody of individuals, and this must also correspond to the legal definition of the patient's right to provide health services. For this reason, in Section 4 (5) of the Health Services Act, the "patient individuality 'was used as one of the criteria of the appropriate and professional level of health services provided. Finally, the facts on the part of the patient must be taken into account in the contested definition of appropriate professional care, reflecting the facts outside the person and the patient's personality, although in any particular case they are linked to the patient at the given point and time. However, these" specific conditions and objective options' must not go beyond the minimum standard of health services provided, which is based on other related provisions of the Health Services Act, the Specific Health Services Act, the Public Health Insurance Act and other laws. The contested definition can also be referred to the Supreme Court judicate, sp. v. 7 Tdo 219 / 2005, in which the Supreme Court is working to define the patient's entitlement to the procedure of the Court of First Instance (appropriate professional level) by means of a medical procedure whereby he must comply with the framework of the rules of science and medical methods, within the limits of the scope of his tasks according to the professional classification and specific conditions and objective possibilities. It is clear that the Ministry of Health, as the promoter of the Health Services Act and as its creator, did not choose the definition contained in Section 4 (5) of the Health Services Act arbitrarily or arbitrarily, but came out of the way the Supreme Court approached the earlier definition of the concept of firstly the concept of public health care within the meaning of Section 11 (1) of the People's Health Act. Thus, there is no fundamental or even fatal shift in understanding of it or a decrease in the standard in relation to the patient. Finally, Article 4 of the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine, according to which any action in the field of health care, including scientific research, must be carried out in accordance with the relevant professional obligations and standards, which also corresponds to the concept of "rules of science and recognised medical practice 'under Section 4 (5) of the Health Services Act.
132. On the basis of the above, the Minister notes that the definition of the patient's right to health care at a properly professional level is balanced and does not contradict the constitutional order or international conventions by which the Czech Republic is bound. He merely adds that the definition of the extent and content of the patient's right to health services is in no way prejudicial to his right to compensation for harm to health, which may be caused by the provision of health services. The Health Services Act is not the basic law governing compensation for such damage. The alleged restriction or reduction of the right to compensation for the damage which may be caused by the provision of health services is a speculation and is not relevant for the review of the constitutionality of the contested legislation because the legislation governing the right to compensation or liability for the damage or damage caused is not subject to review.
133. This argument is also relevant in relation to the objection of unconstitutionality of the provisions of Sections 45 to 47 of the Health Services Act, to which the interveners accuse that they do not contain the obligation to treat the patient as well as in time.

III./ef

Other objections
134. The interveners challenge the legislation of the institute of the so-called previously stated wish pursuant to § 36 (5) and (6) of the Health Services Act. In order to limit the validity of the previously stated wish for a period of five years, the Minister stated that its purpose was to protect patients. During this time, there may be a fundamental change in circumstances on the part of the patient, which may not be known to the health service provider (and therefore cannot be implemented under Section 36 (5) of the Health Services Act), including progress in medicine. The patient's information, which was up to date at the time when he made the previously expressed wish, may no longer be valid at all, and it may be very likely that after five years, at least partially completed procedures, which were commonly used at the time of the request, and which were known to the patient. The limitation of the validity of a previously stated wish cannot be considered to be disproportionate or inappropriate or ineffective. Moreover, unlimited validity is highly questionable for young people who can take advantage of this right, although in some cases they are certainly influential and lack of life experience. They should therefore not be exposed to the fact that their previously expressed wishes will be valid for the rest of their lives. It remains to be said that there is nothing to prevent the patient from renewing or changing its contents after a period of five years.
135. The prohibition on the use of the possibility of a previously stated wish in the case of minors or deprived of legal capacity reflects the relevant legislation according to which such persons can only do acts for which they have reasonable and moral maturity. Otherwise, they are for them, if at all, legal counsel. Paragraph 36 (6) of the Health Services Act prohibits a lawyer from making a wish for these persons. Again, it is a reason to protect a patient who is legitimate and important, given the legal and factual consequences such a wish may have on a patient's life.
136. As regards the objections in relation to Article 35 of the Health Services Act, the Minister pointed out that paragraph 2 (b) of the Act, according to which a minor patient who has reached 15 years of age can be provided without obtaining the consent of the legal representative, provided that the legal representative gives written consent to such a procedure, which may make the subsequent information on the health services provided conditional on being provided. This written consent is part of a medical file on a minor patient. Together with the obligation to respect the opinion of a minor, this refutes the argument by the interveners about the nonsense of the legislation governing the provision of health services to minors in relation to the assistance of parents. It goes without saying that accompanying or consent of legal representatives is not required for health services provided by a registering provider. This does not apply in the case of treatment of a minor in a hospital where it is assumed that there may be more serious interference in the health of a minor or the performance of more demanding health performance, and where the legal representative should therefore not be absent, be it his consent or presence.
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Regulation Information

CitationThe Constitutional Court found no. 437 / 2012 Coll., on the annulment of § 30 paragraph 2 (d) of Act No. 435 / 2004 Coll., on Employment, as amended, and certain provisions of Act No. 372 / 2011 Coll., on health services and the conditions for their provision (Law on Health Services), and the proposal to repeal certain other laws
Regulation TypeThe Constitutional Tribunal found
Author-
CollectionCode of Laws
Date of Promulgation10.12.2012
Effective from-
Effective until-
Status Valid
Legal Areas: Labour relations Labour law Social security law Judicial and Public Prosecutor's Office Administrative law Constitutional (state) law Unemployment security Health
The regulation text is for informational purposes only.

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