A recent change to the Act on Collection of laws, effective from 2020, introduced a general rule for setting the effective date of new laws. New laws will start being effective "in bulk" on 1 January or 1 July respectively.

Exceptions are possible only in case "extremely exceptional cases" when "pressing public interest requires" and in other edge cases (state of national emergency, war, legislative emergency state, etc.)

We are looking forward to this slight improvement to the usability of Czech laws. The actual impact will, however, depend on the approach the Czech Parliament takes. This new rule is adopted in a form of a plain act (not as a constitutional rule) and can be, as a result, overridden by another law. In effect, this change constitutes more of a guidance than an actual enforceable rule.