On Tuesday, 23 May, in the afternoon, the President of the Constitutional Court, Pavel Rychetský, received a delegation from the European Parliament led by MEP Yana Toom (representing the Committee on Legal Affairs). The main objective of the parliamentary mission was to discuss how the primacy of European Union law is implemented at the national level.

At the beginning of the meeting, Pavel Rychetský briefly introduced the Czech constitutional judiciary and its history and the competences of the Constitutional Court. A discussion followed on how the principle of the primacy of European Union law is approached in the Czech Republic. The delegation of the European Parliament directed its questions to specific judgments of the Constitutional Court in which Czech national law and EU law met, to the general relationship of the Constitutional Court's case law to EU law, and to the changes made to the Czech legal system in connection with the country's accession to the European Union. The debate also focused on the broader EU-wide discourse on the legal standing of the principles on which EU law is based and on the relationship between the EU and national law. Along with the President of the Constitutional Court, the meeting was also attended by Justice Jiří Zemánek, who is one of the leading Czech experts in the field of European law.

From left to right: Justice Jiří Zemánek, MEP Yana Toom, President of the Constitutional Court Pavel Rychetský 

Pavel Dvořák, 
Head of External Relations and Protocol Department