Institute of asset declarations as a measure to prevent conflicts of interest in the context of the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court
Abstract
The article focuses on the issue of the so-called asset declarations of public officials under the Conflict of Interest Act and offers an analysis of the constitutional anchoring of this institute, both from the point of view of the public's general right to information, and from the point of view of the limits formulated by the Constitutional Court regarding the provision of information according to the Act on Free Access to Information. The article also includes a more general introduction detailing the goals and content of the researched institute.
In conclusion, the author points out that although Czech legislation is relatively robust in terms of the personal applicability of the relevant provisions of the law and the scope of data subjected to declarations, its effects have been largely reduced by the earlier intervention of the Constitutional Court, which did not allow the widespread publication of any information from asset declarations, namely not even in the case of top state representatives. The author criticizes this conclusion from the position of the already mentioned constitutionally guaranteed right of the public to information and draws attention to its certain comparative unusualness.