Prague, Sept 4 (CTK) – The Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, which are the two houses of Czech parliament, can mutually modify the wording of bills in a way to boost consensus on them, according to a new law which President Milos Zeman signed on Monday, his spokesman Jiri Ovcacek has told CTK.
Under the law, the lower house no longer needs to vote on changes to legislation proposed by the Senate, if the deputies are for their acceptance.
The planned passing of the law was anchored in the Czech constitution 25 years ago.
It will take effect one year after it appears in the Gazette of Law.
Its most significant contribution is a new definition of the debate on bills that enables each of the two houses to tune up a version proposed by the other for the sake of mutual consensus.
Another bill Zeman signed into law on Monday changes the rules of the civil court order so that insolvency cases are assigned to judges at a court randomly, not based on a regular “rotation” system that enabled to anticipate which judge or panel of judges will deal with individual cases.
The bill also lowers the fee for filing anti-discrimination lawsuits.
Zeman also signed a bill raising the remuneration that members of military active reserves receive for their participation in military exercises.
The Defence Ministry says the increased remuneration might attract even experienced workers to the active reserve units, i.e. people with higher wages than those earned by lowest-rank soldiers.
The height of the remuneration will derive from the length of the recipient’s active military service.
Another law signed by Zeman reduces the annual limit of pensioners and children’s spending on medicines, above which the spent sum is covered for them by the state.
The limit will go down from 2,500 to 1,000 crowns for children under 18 and seniors over 65, and to 500 crowns for seniors over 70 as of January 2018.
Zeman also signed the bill enabling employees to apply for up to three-month paid leave if they need to care for seriously ill family members. The employees on such leave would receive 60 percent of their basic pay.
