Parliament of the Czech Republic
Chamber of Deputies

The Parliament of the Czech Republic
The Chamber of Deputies

Copies of Several Historical Documents on the Origin of the Czech State

	The document commonly called the "Golden Bully of Sicily" The Holy Roman Emperor and Frederick the Second, the King of Sicily´s charter, which on the 26th of September, 1212 in Basle, declares Přemysl I and his successors the rightful kings, with the statutory rights and duties of the Bohemian Sovereign.
	The seventh of April, 1348, in Prague, Charles IV is crowned the Holy Roman Emperor, with all the rights and privileges granted to a Czech King by the Roman Kings and Emperors.
	The 31st of July, 1619, the estates of the Czech Crown, gathered at General Assembly, approve a constitution of the Czech State, which establishes a confederation of Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and Upper and Lower Lusatia.
	The State Records of the Czech Kingdom, kept by the regional high courts. The oldest dates from the middle of the 13th century, the last was written in the middle of the 19th.

Buildings of The Parliament of the Czech Republic

The history of one of the oldest parliamentary buildings in Europe, the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic, begins somewhere near the end of the 17th century or the beginning of the 18th. By the year 1720 we know that the Thun family, a rich, artistic and important noble family, had finished building a palace on this piece of land. Approximately 80 years later, this same palace became the seat of the Assembly of the Czech Estates, and almost 200 years after the building´s completion, in 1918, representatives met in the historic assembly hall in order to unseat the Habsburg-Lothringian Dynasty from the Czech Throne, shortly after the defeat of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the First World War, and to declare an independent state; the Czechoslovak Republic. After the federalization of that state in 1968, the former regional assembly building was consigned to the legislative Czech National Council, and after the break-up of the Czech and Slovak Republics in 1993, it became the seat of one of the two chambers of the highest parliament of the Czech republic, the Chamber of Deputies.

As early as the Romanesque period, the street which is today Sněmovní (Assembly) Street, belonged to one of the two main roads along which guests and merchants travelled from the ford on the Vltava River to the Prague Castle. The street´s importance continued into the Gothic and Renaissance periods, in spite of being crossed by several wars and natural disasters, which often resulted in its complete devastation. The original medieval building are recalled to us even today, by the remains of massive cellars, and the gothic portals and powerful thick walls on the ground floors of the buildings. The arches and vaulting on the ground floor of the central part of the Palace that is today the Chamber of Deputies originated in the Renaissance, when the Czech nobility began to build their residences in the vicinity of the rulers´seat (at Prague Castle).

Sněmovní Street reached its architectural peak in the Baroque period, when the Thun family gradually bought up the surrounding real estate, tore down the old buildings and built in their place a palace in the present form. Two portals, belonging to the high Baroque period, opened to the street. The portals recall the work of Santini, although the actual architect of the Thun Palace remains unknown, due to a lack of historical sources.

In the year 1779, the palace was converted to a theatre, which Emperor Joseph II, the son of Maria Teresa was fond of visiting. It is said that he preferred it to all others. In the summer of 1794 the theatre burned down. That is why, in 1801, the Thun Palace was sold to the estates of the Czech Kingdom, which decided to convert it into offices, an assembly hall and estate archive. The regional committee bought, at the same time, a further piece of land which added to the building space, an began to reconstruct and ornament the building. An oval symbol with the crown of St. Wenceslas was placed in the centre over the classicist pediment: leanning against the pediment diagonally are two horns of plenty, to right of one sits Apollo, protector of the wealth of the spirit, and to the left of the other sits Athena, patroness of material wealth. They are symbols of the might of the Czech Lands, which the seat of its assembly should recall.

In 1861, after the fall of Bach´s absolutism, it was necessary to find a new representative space for the once-again revived regional assembly, which had been abolished in 1848. A special committee visited the Vladislav Hall at Prague Castle, but it didn´t satisfy the new demands. For reconstruction seemed that the former assembly building would work better. The assembly hall was lengthened and widened and there were red upholstered seats for 241 people, each with its own desk and drawer. On five columns, on the side opposite the entrance, a gallery for 130 to 150 people was built.

In 1895, they added a chandelier in the neo-Renaissance style, during the installation of electrical lighting and the modernisation of technical equipment.

In 1902 and 1903 the Regional Committee of the Czech Kingdom received new spaces and buildings, primarily the connected block on Tomášská Street, beginning with the Auersberg Palace, and also the connected block on Malostranské Square (the Sternberg and Smiřický Palaces), for its regional offices. In 1903, an arched bridge with a covered walkway was put in across the narrow Thunovská Lane, which connected the assembly hall to the back wing of the Sternberg Palace.

After the year 1918, with the foundation of an independent Czechoslovakia, the character and function of Prague´s Mala Strana palaces changed. Many of them began to serve as the institutions of the new state, or alternatively, as diplomatic offices for foreign governments. In the twenties, the building of the former Regional Assembly of the Czech Kingdom was designated as the Senate of the National Council of the Czechoslovak Republic, while the Rudolfinum was converted into the deputies´assembly hall.

Because of the expanding needs of the new representative bodies, the old assembly building was greatly repaired, adapted and reconstructed in the thirties. In 1933 a granite memorial tablet was set in the wall, south of the portal to Sněmovní Street, on the 15th anniversary of the creation of independent Czechoslovakia. It was created by L. Šaloun and F. Foit; the tablet is markedly styled in the spirit of late Cubism, especially the large state symbol.

The most fundamental reconstructions took place in the years 1935 to 1940, when the palace was brought to its present form, although it was never used for the Senate as had been intended.

In the fifties and sixties the building took turns as institutions of various missions and significances, for example the Ministry of Health or the Ministry of National Defence. However, from the first day of 1969 the Czech National Council began to work on Sněmovní Street, as one of the three parliaments of the newly federalized Czechoslovakia, the legislative mouthpiece of the Czech Republic.

Understandably, the varied use of the building had not improved its physical condition. Several rooms could not be used for any purpose and the technical equipment was falling apart. Therefore, from 1985 to 1989, the historical building was completely rebuilt, a reconstruction which is one of the biggest makeovers of a historically protected building in Prague.

At the completion of the reconstruction work in all the connecting palaces, which under a 1992 law was returned to the purpose for which it should have been repaired at the beginning of the century, the Czech Republic gets a respectable seat for its legislative body; able to meet the most modern needs of the parliament of a country with an unfolding democracy, while preserving the historical picturessqueness and purpose of this building, crowned by the centuries.

The Political system of the Czech Republic

The political system of the Czech Republic has free and voluntary origins and is based on the competition of political parties. It respects basic democratic principles and rejects coercion as a means of implementing its interests. Political decisions flow from the will of majority expressed through the freedom of voting. Decisions of majority respect minoritie rights. The Czech Republic is bound by the ratification and declaration of international treaties on human rights and basic freedoms; they are immediately effective and have precedence over the law.

Legislative power in the Czech Republic resides in parliament. The parliament is divided into two chambers, the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. The Chamber of Deputies has 200 members, who are elected at four-year intervals. The Senate has 81 members who are elected every six years, one-third of them every two years. Parliamentary elections are conducted by secret ballot, and voting is universal, equal, and direct. Members are elected to the Chamber of Deputies under the proportional system, and to the Senate under the majority system. Every citizen who has reached the age of 21 may stand for election to the Chamber of Deputies, while it is necessary to be at least 40 to stand for the position of senator. No one may be a member of both chambers simultaneously. The office of the president or a judgeship is incompatible with the position of deputy or senator. Meetings of chambers are continuing.

The Chamber of Deputies appoints and dismisses its chair and vice-chair, and likewise, the Senate the chair and vice-chair of the Senate. A deputy or senator who is a member of the government may be neither the chair nor vice-chair of the Chamber of Deputies or Senate, nor a member of a parliamentary committee nor commission.

The chambers are able to vote when at least one third of the members are present. To pass a bill, a simple majority of the senators or deputies present is necessary. To ratify a constituational law, a three-fifths majority of all deputies is necessary, and a three-fifths majority of those senators present. A bill may be introduced by a deputy, a group of deputies, the Senate, the government or representative bodies of the higher territorial self-governing units. Bills go to the Chamber of Deputies. International agreements, which require approval of the Parliament, the Parliament approves in the same manner as bills.