Czech Republic: Recodification of Criminal Law
On January 1, 2010, a new Criminal Code (act No. 40/2009 Coll.) came into force. This has brought about a number of changes in such areas as criminal culpability, criminal sanctions, and individual criminal offences.
As far as culpability issues are concerned, we note e.g. the categorization of criminal offenses, where the law now distinguishes between felonies and misdemeanours, and the expansion of exculpatory defenses, which newly include victim's consent and admissible risk. On the other hand, the prerequisites for criminal culpability have remained unaltered - in other words, it continues to be the case that only natural persons who have reached a certain age and are accountable can have criminal liability; the original proposal to introduce criminal liability for legal entities was in the end not incorporated in the new Criminal Code. The Code also expands the catalogue of possible sentences by introducing such new sanctions as home detention and a ban on entering the premises of sports, cultural, or social events. While most criminal offences have been carried over from previous criminal law (but are now defined with more precision), one can nonetheless find a number of new offences. From among the area of economic crimes, we might mention e.g. the criminal offense of a violation of competition rules, which covers, among other things, the culpability of natural persons who enter into a cartel agreement in their capacity as competitors (i.e., acting on behalf of a competitor).