The text was drawn up by MPs from the ruling coalition as a preliminary working draft, rather than by the government as an official bill. Czech Minister of Justice Jeroným Tejc told POLITICO that the leaked version “was not prepared by anyone from the Ministry of Justice, and personally I do not consider it suitable for discussion.”
Former Minister of Foreign Affairs Jan Lipavský called the working draft a “Russian recipe for totalitarianism.” Danuše Nerudová, an MEP for the European People’s Party and former Czech presidential candidate, warned in a statement to POLITICO that “it stigmatizes civil society, nongovernmental organizations, experts and the media, and it introduces a principle into the Czech environment that belongs more in authoritarian regimes.”
“When laws of this kind are drafted so broadly … the extreme vagueness of those legislative terms always means they want to create a tool that they can, but don’t have to, use against whoever they want,” said Nadiia Ivanova, head of the Human Rights and Democracy Centre at the NGO People in Need.
Babiš dismissed comparisons to the Russian law, and said the working draft version would undergo changes.
Macinka was more combative on Monday: “When you’re out of arguments, you just bring up Russia, that’s a classic,” he said.
After the public backlash, Tomio Okamura, the speaker of the lower house of parliament, clarified that a government ministry will now take over and finalize the legislation before introducing it in parliament.
The Prime Minister’s Office did not reply to a request for comment.