A new Act on Offences changes authorities’ approach of solving offences of citizens, but mostly entrepreneurs and legal entities, and modifies the mechanism of subsequent imposition of penalties.

Any person who commits an offence shall obtain detailed reasoning of the seriousness of the offence committed and the penalty imposed. These detailed rules for imposition of administrative penalties together with a list of deteriorating and mitigating circumstances should cause that the person on whom the penalty is imposed shall be sufficiently informed from the reasoning on the seriousness of the committed offence.

New institutes are established, such as abandonment or conditional abandonment of imposition of the penalty or extraordinary decrease in the penalty. In this respect, the law stipulates a list of mitigating circumstances, such as young age of the offender, committing an offence under pressure, voluntary damages or cooperation with authorities.

A new institute called settlement provides the offender with a possibility to compensate a victim without necessity of taking part in usually time-consuming offence proceeding to which other costs could be connected.

Changes relate also to the mechanism of assessment of offences. The new Act does not stipulate new offences or reduce the current list of offences. New legislation should fill the gap in the area of administrative punishment of legal or natural persons. The new Act unifies conditions of liability of natural persons, legal persons and natural persons – entrepreneurs for offences, of which a unified definition has been established. New definition of offence includes not only offences but also other administrative delicts.

Act no. 250/2016 Coll.
With effect from: 1 July 2017