Czech Constitutional Court rejects town's request to delay restitution to Romani family, calls the town's argument biased

The Supreme Court has ruled that the town of Vsetín is obliged to apologize to and pay each of the family members compensation ranging from CZK 10,000 [EUR 395] to CZK 40,000 [EUR 1,580] for forcibly relocating them to the village of Vidnava in the Jeseníky area and to apologize for remarks made about them at the time by Mayor Jiří Čunek (Christian Democrats – KDU-ČSL). Čunek told ČTK today that he is surprised the ÚS rejected the request for a suspension and he especially disagrees with the reasoning.

In the rejection, which is available in an online database, the ÚS does not foreshadow how it might ultimately rule on the complaint. The rejection is just of the motion to suspend execution of the judgment pending the final ruling.

According to recent remarks made by Čunek, Vsetín has filed or will file several complaints about the courts’ handling of its disputes with four families whose fates were all similar. In the application for a postponement of the execution of the judgment in favor of the family who were forcibly relocated into Vidnava, the town said that if it were to pay the compensation now and then succeed with its complaint to the Constitutional Court against the judgment, it would be difficult to get the money back.

The town argued that any such dispute would unnecessarily burden the courts and that “the issuance of writs of execution for collections against persons of Romani nationality (…) does not lead to the voluntary fulfillment of the obligations imposed by such writs of execution”. The Constitutional Court justices did not find a reason to intervene against the execution of the Supreme Court judgment and criticized the town’s argument.

“The ÚS considers it unacceptable that the plaintiff’s argument associates a ‘high probability’ of the other parties not returning the amounts paid to them with their belonging to a certain ethnicity,” the ruling reads. Biased arguments of this kind, according to the ÚS, are incompatible with the principle of equality in dignity and rights.

Given that one reason for the dispute is the remarks previously made by Mayor Čunek against the Romani families, the use of such arguments was considered by the ÚS to be especially paradoxical and hard to understand. “It is all the more alarming that [such arguments] are being applied when the plaintiff using them is an entity that is not permitted, even when defending its rights in the area of private law, to lose sight of its public law position within the framework of the system of public power and its duty to honor the constitutional order,” reads the ruling by Judge-Rapporteur Kateřina Ronovská.

Čunek told ČTK that it was the Czech Supreme Court itself that said the town should presume that ethnic Roma have problems managing money and planning, and that the Constitutional Court is now criticizing him for generalizing about and judging ethnic Roma. “We were led to that conclusion by a decision of the Supreme Court that is still in effect and on the basis of which we have to pay. The Constitutional Court is castigating us for expressing ourselves in those terms, but those people are the ones who destroyed the building and didn’t pay and so forth. It seems to me that the Constitutional Court reasoning comes from a whole other planet, yet again, and does not reflect the decision of the Supreme Court and its reasoning, it absolutely contradicts it,” Čunek said.

Both courts, in the mayor’s view, are approaching the case from the perspective that what is important is not the truth, but who is or isn’t of another ethnicity. “Unfortunately, they are framing this as about Roma, and basically the Roma are always right, and essentially the Roma must always be complied with, and that is unacceptable to me,” he said.

The town of Vsetín evicted Romani families who were residing in a municipally-owned apartment building that was in bad shape and subsequently demolished the property. Some of the tenants had allegedly not paid rent.

The Romani evictees were rehoused either in housing made out of repurposed shipping containers in Vsetín, or were forced to assume loans for the purchase of old houses in a completely different region. The town’s approach was criticized by human rights defenders, the mayors of the municipalities into which the Roma were relocated, politicians and Romani people.

Protracted litigation followed the evictions. The Supreme Court has awarded the families who sued compensation totalling CZK 1,825,000 [EUR 72,000], which the leadership of the Vsetín town hall considers unfair.

Čunek said in February that the town is paying a high price for what he called “an act of mercy”, because in 2006 the town did not throw the alleged “rent defaulters” out into the street, but “aided” them with arranging new housing. The attorney for the Romani families, Zdeňka Poláková, said that the mayor of Vsetín is distorting the situation.

According to the Supreme Court, Vsetín’s actions were taken to solve its problem with these tenants, not to solve the tenants’ problems with their housing. The ÚS has currently registered four complaints which are connected to the cases against Vsetín, court spokesperson Kamila Abbasi said.

Two of those complaints were filed by the town of Vsetín, both of them unsuccessful motions to postpone execution of judgments against the town. However, just one of those rulings is available in the database so far.

Two complaints were also filed by the evicted Romani families, so the ÚS is reviewing verdicts which have taken effect from the perspectives of both sides of these disputes. The Supreme Court has handed down another two verdicts in these cases against which it can also be presumed that complaints will be filed.

Each of those verdicts involves another extended Romani family and their claims against the town.