EFFECTIVENESS OF TRANSPOSED EU EQUALITY LAW IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC

Abstract

Although the acquis communautaire relating to gender equality has largely been transposed in the Czech Republic, this does not necessarily mean that these rules are being fully implemented. Almost two years after accession to the EU, the equally important implementation phases – namely, application (establishment of procedures and administration of measures by the relevant authorities) and enforcement (monitoring by the relevant authorities and ensuring or compelling conformity) – are severely underdeveloped, and compliance by the private sector is at a low level. Little attention is paid to continuous policy evaluation, i.e. checking whether the adopted methods of application and enforcement are bringing about the desired results, or subsequent policy reform, i.e. learning from lessons drawn from the evaluation stage.
In this paper, the individual stages of implementation will be looked at in order to determine possible challenges to the effectiveness of equality law at the national level. Effectiveness here is understood, following Snyder, as the fact that “law matters: it has effects on political, economic and social life outside the law – that is, apart from simply the elaboration of legal doctrine”.