Constitutional Court to debate state-church contracts next week

Brno, Feb 26 (CTK) - The Czech Constitutional Court (US) that yesterday discussed a proposal to impose an injunction suspending the implementation of the state contracts granting financial compensation to churches, decided to study the contracts and debate the issue next Tuesday again, Tomas Langasek told CTK.

Langasek, US secretary, said the government should submit the contracts to the court in three days.

The contracts that Prime Minister Petr Necas (Civic Democrats, ODS) signed with 16 churches on behalf of the government on Friday, bind the state to pay financial compensation to churches for unreturned property within the restitution law that returns confiscated property to churches.

A few days ago, lawmakers from the senior opposition Social Democratic Party (CSSD) asked the US to have the contracts' effect suspended by a preliminary injunction pending the US's decision on three opposition parties' separate complaints demanding that the whole church restitution law be scrapped.

As from yesterday, the US will discuss the three complaints within a single proceeding, with Stanislav Balik as the judge rapporteur.

The complaints against the law have been lodged by the CSSD, the Communists (KSCM) and the Public Affairs (VV).

A group of senators that joined the VV's complaint will also be a party to the dispute.

Under the law on return of church property, which the Chamber of Deputies passed last November, churches are to be returned land and real estate, confiscated from them by the communist regime, worth 75 billion and given 59 billion crowns in financial compensation for unreturned property during the following 30 years. The largest sum, 47 billion crowns, will go to the Roman Catholic Church.

US chairman Pavel Rychetsky said on Monday that the CSSD's injunction proposal demands that the government be banned from signing the contracts pending a decision on the whole case, but in subtext it says the US should order the government not to fulfil the contracts pending the US decision on the church restitution law.

Judges must deal with this somehow, Rychetsky said.

($1=19.189 crowns)