Legal Cases in the Public Interest

There are countries in Europe where the native considers himself as a kind of settler, indifferent to the fate of the spot which he inhabits. The greatest changes are effected there without his concurrence…
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835)

Making it impossible for citizens to take part in decisions that decide the fate of the places where they live-this is a dream of many politicians, and top bureaucrats as well. EPS does everything it can to keep the Czech Republic from being the sort of country Tocqueville had in mind. We therefore support citizens' right to take part in the permit processes for environmentally questionable activities and construction projects.
We focus primarily on nationwide causes and rural areas (we handle practically no Prague cases). Our work is always based on thorough legal analysis and legal steps on its basis. In order to increase the force of our legal argumentation, however, we also have expert studies written, and are no strangers to obtaining media coverage nor to helping citizens found civic associations.

Legal Cases for the Protection of the Environment

The Nové Mlýny Case
EPS vs. the state enterprise Povodí Moravy s.p., the ministry of agriculture, and the Břeclav District Office5, in the case of deliberate flooding of islands whose construction cost taxpayers 60 million crowns.
"Well of course, but that's just nature."
Povodí Moravy spokesperson Václav Košacký in response to major daily MF Dnes's query as to whether or not he knew that, now that Povodí had artificially raised the level of the Nové Mlýny reservoirs, the slightest wave would drown islands on which floodplain forests were gradually regenerating.
Nové Mlýny, a series of dam-based reservoirs on the Dyje River, was meant to serve for the irrigation of surrounding agricultural cooperatives. Highly valuable floodplain forest fell to a reservoir within Pálava, a protected nature area6. After Communism fell, the project proved itself to be uneconomic, and discussions on at least partially returning this site to its original state renewed. These negotiations paid off at least partially, as the state paid Povodí, as the reservoirs administrator, 60 million crowns ($1,818,000) to construct two artificial islands in the middle of the reservoir. On these islands, the floodplain forest and fauna were to be partially restored. And indeed, lowering the water level and building the islands really did lead to a surprisingly fast renewal of 50 ha (124 acres) of wetlands ecosystems. The reservoir was even added to the International List of Wetlands under the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands. However, Povodí started putting enormous effort into re-raising the water level just before the project was complete. We used all the tools the law provides to avert this barbarous act.
We participated in all permit proceedings, submitted dozens of legal filings, filed suit at the Prague High Court7, and drew media attention to the case. This case's key problem is that, for its main actors, the ministries of environment and agriculture, it is really about a wider battle for jurisdiction (and power). The law (and its interpretation by the Constitutional Court) states that the Ministry of Environment has jurisdiction in the matter. However, the mighty Ministry of Agriculture had no intention of just accepting this. The case thus became a clash between authorities that we would more expect to see in a banana republic than in a country preparing for EU accession. One ministry forbade the raising of the water level; the other permitted it. EPS turned to the Ombudsman, who confirmed that the Ministry of Agriculture was acting unlawfully. Regardless, Povodí Moravy s.p. unlawfully raised the water level at the beginning of August 2001, and thereby submerged islands constructed at great expense and 50 ha of floodplain forest. The act's logic was relentless: "if we destroy the precious biospheres in the reservoir and the islands built at such expense, environmentalists will no longer have anything to fight for." EPS immediately turned to the Police of the CR, demanding they investigate the raising of the water as an illegal act. During the finding of facts, the police turned to the Ministry of Agriculture, which informed it that Povodí's actions had not led to any damage to property; the police thus ended the investigation. EPS then obtained an appraisal evaluating the damage caused as dozens of millions of crowns. As a result, prosecution is soon to be renewed. Meanwhile, we have brought the attention of newspapers and national TV news to the case many times.

The Case of the Nemak Factory in Most
Nemak is ignoring the law… and common sense.

"Investors like green fields. They like birds and forests. There are brown fields [unused, ecologically degraded areas] in Most, but why would we build a factory in the middle of a [former] coal pit? They would have to pave the roads with gold for us to go there."
Nemak representative Pavel Kučera in the English daily Prague Pill

"It's not important what'll fly out those chimneys. What's important is the district public health officer's statement."
Pavel Kučera, in response to a question on how much and what kind of waste his firm's factory in Havraň u Mostu will produce.

Imagine a small but ancient city destroyed by the Communists and "rebuilt" several kilometers away so it could be replaced with a brown-coal strip mine. This is Most, North Bohemia, northwestern Czech Republic. Imagine its surroundings in the same devastated condition. Now imagine a single untouched area in its environs, and a factory to be built atop it. This is Nemak's plant. Meanwhile, the plant will be a source of carcinogenic dioxins-its operation will thus contaminate the surrounding agricultural land and products, and thereby consumers. The plant's location is absurd if only for the reason that, in 1993, an industrial zone was created (on land from now-defunct villages) for similar projects, and an access road and infrastructure established there, while the Havraň site will have to be provided with 5-km-long utilities networks, resulting in 50 million crowns ($1,503,000) needlessly leaving taxpayers' pockets. In spite of the above, the Government (after a meeting between the Prime Minister and Nemak representatives) subsidized the project to the tune of 80 million crowns ($24,242,000). Prime Minister Zeman supports this investment plan using questionable and unscrupulous means. For example, on January 1st, 2002, in TV Nova's Sedmička discussion with Václav Klaus, head of ODS and of the lower house, he compared the plant's opponents to terrorists.
EPS is representing a local private farmer, Jan Rajtr from Moravěves, who is leading the resistance against Nemak's present siting plans. We also discovered a serious circumvention of the law by the Regional Commissioner, who is simultaneously a partner in the firm that mediated the investment for Nemak. We are also opposing a number of other illegalities. We made a number of administrative filings and filed numerous suits and criminal complaints in this matter, made great efforts to annul the unlawful decision by the Ministry of Environment, etc. We are also trying to persuade the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to re-review Nemak's application for credit for use in this project. The media have been watching the whole case with interest. Over 70 newspaper articles have covered the Nemak case; two prestigious political weeklies gave it front-page mention. The case appeared twice in the main newscast of ČT1, the main Czech public TV channel, and also in its Tady a teď journalistic program. The report on EPS's appeal against the land-use-permit decision for the plant opened up a debate on the issue of foreign investments in the CR during one episode of ČT2's 21 discussion program.

Brno's "Large Bypass" ("Velký městský okruh") And Its Structures
Citizens of the Moravian capital fight an ill-considered transport solution.
In the 90s, the administration of Brno (a city of roughly 400,000) gave up on progressive solutions (e.g. increased support for public transport) for the enormous growth of personal transport it faced, and decided for a conventional solution: construction of a bypass, which, however, is better described as a "throughpass," as it winds among residential and even recreational parts of town.
The issue mobilized both a number of local NGOs and individual citizens, who began, independently of one another, turning to our organization. The need thus arose to coordinate the work of this heterogeneous group, mainly in order to increase the effectiveness of their work and of EPS's provision of legal aid. We therefore initiated the creation of an informal association, Brněnský dopravní kruh (the "Brno Transport Circle") and coordinated its activities for a year. The Transport Circle mainly coordinates and communicates, both internally (through a 19-participant e-mail conference and through meetings, of which 18 have occurred since its founding) and externally (via the website www.bdk.ecn. and leaflets informing citizens of controversial construction), successfully bringing the public to the meeting-rooms during the public discussions required for environmental impact assessments ("EIAs" below), etc.).
The Circle has rented two advertising spaces at key public-transport junctions. We have concurrently taken legal steps to reflect citizens' objections to individual structures in the bypass-suits, administrative filings, and negotiations with the investor (Brněnské komunikace a.s.).

Felling Continues in Šumava National Park
The park administration and the Ministry of Environment are no longer even pretending to observe the law.
Last year as in previous years, the Šumava National Park Administration "took action" against a bark-beetle infestation. It requested permission to do so from… the Šumava National Park Administration. The National Park Administration objectively considered the request (its representatives stated during oral negotiations with representatives of EPS and Friends of the Earth-Czech Republic that determining if bark beetles actually exist in the places where trees are to be felled would be "unjustified emphasis on details") and granted the National Park Administration the permit.
We took part in the administrative procedure (oral negotiations and an appeal), where we objected to the Administration's bias and its inexpert manner of decision-making, motivated by an effort to hide its own professional mistakes and white-collar crime at the Park. The Administration's director inspected our complaint of bias and reached the conclusion that the officials granting the permit are not actually his subordinates, as he is merely entitled to appoint/remove them, stipulate their wages, assign them tasks, and monitor them. Therefore, there could be no talk of bias. In 2001, we filed three suits in this matter for Friends of the Earth-Czech Republic and continued court cases from previous years.

The Case of the D8 Highway's Cutting through the České Středohoří Nature Reserve
We continue our struggle with the road lobby.
Last year, the Minister of Environment unlawfully granted final approval to the construction of a highway through this nature reserve, and supported the proposal by Ředitelství silnic a dálnic ČR (the state-funded organization responsible for administering and maintaining roads and road-related property), which completely ignores environmental protection interests in this uniquely valuable site. In refusing our appeals against his granting the exception from the law (which does not allow highways to be built in nature reserves), the minister set a dangerous precedent for other planned, controversial road construction in our country. We thus continued in 2001 our cooperation with Children of the Earth, the Czech civic association that leads the campaign against construction of highway D8's approved variant. We made nearly a dozen legal filings against the decision and sought a way to force a cross-border-highway EIA (per the ESPOO Convention). However, the responsible officials and politicians have not yet dared to face the powerful Czech road lobby.

The Dispute over the Routing of the D11 Highway

Here, EPS is helping fight both law-breaking authorities and their discrimination towards "uncomfortable" civic initiatives.
"We are at present witnesses to the destruction of precious elements of nature, both inside and outside 'protected' areas, before the eyes of-or even in the hands of-the state nature-protection authorities."
RNDr. Jaroslav Rydlo, staff member at the Středočeské muzeum (Central Bohemian Museum) in Roztoky u Prahy, commenting on the granting of permission for the D11 highway to cut through the Libický luh nature reserve.

The procedure setting the route of the D11 highway (from Prague to Hradec Králové), which is to lead through valuable biotopes in the Elbe basin, is now in its third year. The state administration is promoting a variant for the section intersecting Libický luh that could seriously threaten this reserve. Three civic initiatives are participating in the procedure; we are providing them legal aid. And the associations know their work, as shown by, among other things, the fact that the Ministry for Local Development has already once accepted their argument that the procedure was run unlawfully, annulled the decision, and sent the matter back to the District Office in Nymburk for a new procedure. But rather than eliminating the criticized illegalities, the District Office decided to eliminate the critics-by excluding civic associations from the land use permit procedure. The responsible District Office official stated, in response to a direct question posed during an October 2001 ČT program, that the reason for their exclusion was an order that the land use permit procedure be concluded as quickly as possible. This ill-considered revelation shows how the "independent" Czech state administration handles citizens who criticize a no-hurdles approval towards environmentally questionable projects.
We filed three suits against the exclusion of civic associations and striking illegalities in the state administration's decision-making.

The Hluboká Golf Course Case
Will our national heritage fall to commercial and political interests?

"Through its layout and its interrelation with the dominant feature that is the Hluboká estate and with the surrounding landscaping, this land's current appearance, which the planned golf course would disrupt, has significant and irreplaceable aesthetic value. The proposed course will be an indisputable, major blow to that value."
From a study by Doc. Ing. arch. Ivan Vorel CSc., from the urban-planning institute at the school of architecture at Czech Technical University's Prague branch

For two years, we have been aiding South Bohemian civic associations in their fight to save the surroundings of the Hluboká nad Vltavou mansion, with high ecological and historical value. In terms of its extent and consistency, the park landscaping done by the owners of the Hluboká estate in previous centuries can only be compared, in the Czech context, to the Lednice-Valtice estate complex-which is on the UNESCO list, i.e. is officially part of the world's great natural heritage. An investor has come with a plan to build an 18-hole championship golf course on this site. In the opinion of environmental groups and most state authorities (e.g. the Státní památkový ústav (National Heritage Institute), Agentura ochrany přírody (Conservation Agency), and the Ministry of Environment, this will irreparably damage the area's natural and landscaping value. The investor (who has close ties to local politics) is striving to get the construction permit with abundant help from the District Office in České Budějovice, which has already thrice issued a permit for the course's construction. And yet the Ministry of Environment has annulled two permit decisions, and at the end of the year, the case was entering, on the basis of an EPS appeal, its now-third set of review proceedings.
Because the investor did not wait for the procedure to end and began actually building the golf course on the site under the guise of so-called "reclamation" or "cultivation" works, we focused our efforts on stopping this "wildcat" construction.
We filed four criminal complaints and decided to turn to the Ombudsman with the matter, because circumvention of the law on the parts of both the investor and the District Office was growing worse and worse. Regional media are following the case closely.

The Provodov Case-Citizens Protecting a Pilgrimage Site
On the one side stands an energy giant. On the other, a community.
Jihomoravská energetika ("JME" below), a power-distribution company, plans to lead high-voltage towers up to 30 meters (100 ft) high through the environmentally and aesthetically most valuable part of the Bílé Karpaty nature reserve in Moravia. This barbarous plan outraged the citizens of Provodov (a pilgrimage site with Baroque-era architecture) and surrounding villages, and they decided to oppose it. EPS helped these citizens found a civic association and participate in the EIA procedure (which was manipulated by the investor). Since the investor and those drafting the EIA reject these citizens' laymen's opinions, EPS had an authorized architect prepare an objective expert study on these structures' impact on the character of the landscape, to strengthen their position. (Czech law offers specific protection for a landscape's "character.") We then wrote a detailed statement on its basis to supplement the documentation.
JME also abused the fact that the owners of the properties affected are poorly versed in the law, by closing with them, in 1998, a contract "encumbering" their property, i.e. giving JME certain rights upon it, which was weighted heavily against them. The JME representative deceived owners by misrepresenting JME's plans as a mere reconstruction of existing lines. Once the landowners learned the truth, nearly all of them wrote a notice of withdrawal from the contract. An EPS lawyer then drafted and sent to the JME directorate a detailed legal analysis on behalf of one landowner, substantiating his claim that the contract was not concluded in good faith and was of questionable legal validity.
EPS also addressed ten members of the Regional Council for the Zlín region on behalf of local citizens, to inform them of the plan's problematic legal aspects. The Regional Council took a negative stance towards the power-line route variant that JME is promoting.

South Bohemian Environmental Groups Successfully Fight Exclusion from Proceedings
EPS successfully intervened to defend civic associations' rights.
The environment department at the District Office in České Budějovice repeatedly prevented civic associations from participating in procedures concerning environmentally questionable construction projects. Under Czech law, associations can only participate in procedures affecting conservation or landscape-preservation interests. The District Office thus issued statements designating even strikingly questionable projects as environmentally harmless, in an effort to torpedo environmental NGOs' activities. We lodged a complaint against the District Office staff with the Ministry of Environment, which accepted our arguments and ordered the District Office to stop issuing these unlawful statements.

Protection of Rivers in the Moravskoslezské Beskydy Mountains
Fish don't swim when they're swimming in concrete.
We are systematically providing legal aid to Ochrana vod, a North Moravian civic initiative that promotes revitalization of watercourses, in their fight against construction of ineffective "flood-control" structures on rivers in the Beskydy (Beskids) mountains.The stateenterprise Povodí Odry is building these in an attempt to acquire maximum state funding for its activities. These structures prevent the migration of protected fish species and disrupt river ecosystems. This is leading to the liquidation of our Carpathian-type gravel-bearing rivers (as they are termed in Czech). The relevant offices ease the task of gaining permits for river-regulation structures by calling the construction of new useless structures "maintenance" of ones that in reality were destroyed by severe flooding in 1996, and in whose surroundings ecological stability has returned… along with endangered aquatic fauna.
In 2001, our aid was mainly in the form of numerous legal consultations and of two suits against the decisions by the Ministry of Environment that enabled the construction of the mentioned structures on the Tyra watercourse.

Protecting Nature in the Moravskoslezské Beskydy Mountains in Tandem with the Local Association Beskydčan
Beskydčan, a civic initiative from the village of Ostravice in the heart of the Moravsko-Slezské Beskydys nature reserve, is defending the local environment.
An investor is not only planning to build in the village of Čeladná a 27-hole golf course that will lie partially on the territory of the Beskydys reserve, but intends it as just the first step in building up to eight new courses, most of them in the beautiful natural environment of the Beskydys villages. The investor respects neither the rights of the owners of affected properties, nor the law (he began building before acquiring a permit), nor nature. As EPS has seen so often in golf-course cases, the investor is planning inappropriate earthworks and the planting of introduced tree species. It is also still unclear how the chemicals to be used will affect the environment, and the icing on this case is that the course will be ringed with a fence six kilometers (3.7 mi) long and 180 cm (70 in.) high. EPS and Beskydčan joined in the administrative procedure connected with the completion of the course. There is a light at the end of the tunnel in this legally complex case, as the developer has stated in the regional press that he is dropping his plans to build further courses, based on his experience from the administrative procedure in which Beskydčan and EPS participated.
An illegal ski run has been in operation in the Beskydys reserve's most strictly protected zone, atop Lysá hora, for several decades. In recent years, skiers' growing demands as to the ski run's surface have caused greater use of a snow grooming machine, bringing major soil erosion and damage to vegetation. Since the current situation is practically and legally unsustainable, the operator aims to legalize the course's operation. But for safe operation, earthworks-unacceptable in a reserve's core zone-are needed. Beskydčan and EPS are thus aiming, through several administrative procedures, for reforestation of the site. So far, we have managed to prevent emission of a permit for running grooming equipment. It is still unclear how the case will end.
Cell-phone network operators' antenna towers are the bane of nature reserves in Czech mountains. However, Beskydčan and EPS are not trying to block their construction entirely, but merely to help minimize their negative impact on the character of the landscape, mainly by pushing for full use of existing transmitters. Using this "compromise" during procedures, we have stopped the construction of several transmitters.

Znojmo-An Oasis of Environmental Lawlessness
The fountainhead of Znojmo authorities' illegalities when approving environmentally questionable projects lies deep.
Active Znojmo citizens face an extreme aversion by local authorities towards defending the city's culture and living conditions before devastating entrepreneurial plans.
For several years, local activists have been urging authorities to solve unbearable noise pollution caused by a road slicing through town. EPS therefore wrote, on behalf of 12 citizens from the worst-affected areas, a new, detailed complaint to the District Public Health Office, and aimed, if that did not properly solve the case, to bring it to court.
The situation is further worsened by projected and existing construction that attracts additional traffic to the high-noise area. One such project is a new Shell gas station, which moreover stands in the legally protected zone of Znojmo's historical center. Based on EPS's input, the Ministry of Culture annulled the District Office's approval for the station's siting. The Ministry for Local Development, too, stated that both the city and district authorities committed a number of errors when deciding about the station's construction. Regardless, we have not succeeded in getting the permit annulled, let alone in getting the station removed (since by this time it had been built).
Another acute public debate in Znojmo concerns the city's plan to build a new, large "water park" very close to the Loucký monastery, formerly home to Premonstratensian monks. This historical monument is among the most significant Baroque monastery complexes in Central Europe, though today it suffers from indiscriminate Communist-era zoning in its surroundings. Both Znojmo's professionals and its public (mainly, but not solely, members of its Beautification Club) see the park plans as a continuation of Communist planners' approach: neglecting the monastery's spiritual and architectural character and significance. EPS has attacked the park's unlawful permit and aims to have it annulled.
EPS also trying to help local citizens to organize themselves. We helped in the founding of a Znojmo-wide civic association that is to replace several others that sprang up in response to individual controversial projects.

Cooperating with Citizens of Communities Threatened with Placement of a Nuclear Waste Disposal Site
We are helping citizens of communities where surveying for selection of a nuclear waste disposal site has begun.

"Well, I wouldn't have a problem with the waste, even if it was next to muh garden-I'd take an extra barrel and boil water on it…" …joked Vítězslav Duda, director of Správa úložišť jaderných odpadů (the Nuclear Waste Storage and Disposal Sites Administration) at a meeting with citizens of the village Chyšky, where he unsuccessfully tried to force assent to construction of a storage site on Chyšky's land.

We are providing legal advice to Calla, an environmental group that helps localities threatened with placement of a nuclear waste disposal site nearby. We were the first to start cooperation with Chyšky citizens-we helped them found the association Zachovalý kraj, met with mayors, and published a brochure, "Legal Handbook for Anyone Who Does Not Want to Live by a Nuclear Waste Disposal Site," for the affected communities.

Aid to the Village of Bělá against a Sand and Gravel Mine
We helped councilors (and several citizens) from Bělá, a border village near the city of Opava, to take legal steps against a local firm's plan to mine sand and gravel just 100 meters (330 ft) from residences, thereby worsening living conditions and harming the local countryside. We as an NGO decided to help this village (absurdly overlooked by the state) even financially, to help protect the environment. Only with this aid could Bělá order an independent assessment, which confirmed previous, costly ones that state authorities had called into question. From a thank-you letter by mayor Karel Krupa:
Dear sirs from Ekologický právní servis Brno,
Please allow me, in the name of the Bělá Municipal Council, to thank you in at least this way for your exemplary expert and financial assistance that helped resolve matters vital to the citizens of our village. We now believe that the Ostrava District Mining Authority will decide against the mining proponent in the matter of mining within Bělá's territory, on the basis of forensic experts' assessments (paid for by you). We thus will have together managed to prevent a drastic change to the local color of our small but still beautiful village, Bělá…

Aid to "Minor" Civic Activities
There are no cases too small for us.
After EPS prevented the construction of a giant "chicken factory" by the village Strmilov in 2000, citizens of several other communities turned to them with similar cases. One such case is ongoing in Velký Karlov, near Znojmo, where the cooperative Agrodružstvo Jevišovice plans the construction of a broiler farm that would hold 200,000+ chickens. The village starts a mere 200 m (656 ft) away from the planned farm buildings. EPS is taking part in the permit procedure; it has, among other steps, ordered an assessment by the Prague Výzkumný ústav živočišné výroby (Animal Husbandry Research Institute), of whether conditions of law proscribing cruelty to animals, and of the Veterinary Act, were observed when planning the farm's extent and technology.
Another case of resistance by citizens-and their community-against a large-capacity breeding farm is the planned pig farm in the village Dolní Dubňany. EPS helped the village draft comments for the EIA documentation, and is preparing for the village source materials for a change to the local land-use plan, which could prevent the planned construction.
Citizens of the villages Bohuslavice and Třeština are fighting, both through an association (Hráz) and their governments, the plans of the sand and gravel mining company Štěrk a písek Morava to mine on the land of the neighboring village of Dubicko. So far, EPS has explained to Hráz's representatives the basics of the legal provisions regarding quarrying permits, and citizens' and communities' options for participating in procedures. EPS has also provided them sample legal filings and, when needed, information by e-mail or phone.
The beautification club in Veverská Bítýška and the Veverka branch of Český svaz ochranců přírody (the Czech Association of Conservationists) fear the planned construction of a HARTMANN-RICO medical equipment sterilization plant in the center of town. The reason? A highly toxic gas-ethylene oxide-is to be used for sterilization. An EPS lawyer offered consulting to Veverka's members when needed during the EIA and land-use procedures.
In 2001 we also offered several legal consultations to Zlín citizens who are resisting the construction of a multi-purpose building right next to their homes. They mainly object to the insufficient assessment of the impact the new building would have on local noise and emissions levels. We also offer basic legal services to citizens of the South Bohemian city Tábor and their initiatives. Not a golden, but an ashen age awaits Kladno retiree Mrs. A., as she lives in a house nearby an industrial zone where, in recent years, several new sources of noise and air pollution have emerged. We therefore have provided her several phone consultations and written an appeal against the decision to use the zone for a solid-fuel waste dump. This decision was issued in a procedure from which Mrs. A., a valid participant under the Construction Act, was illegally omitted.
An EPS lawyer helped the Sázava branch of the Czech Association of Conservationists write an appeal against a decision by the District Office in Kutná Hora: the office, in its role as a conservation and landscape-preservation authority, issued a binding statement affecting a significant landscape feature-the valley flood plains of the Sázava. Concretely, the Sázava's shore land is to be fenced in. The office did not take into account forensic studies showing that the fence would significantly degrade local ecological stability and ecosystems.

Cases of Authorities' Illegal Denial of the Right to Information
We sought to create significant court precedents, just as in two thousand… and won.

A Court Confirmed EPS's Claim: Information in Administrative Files Is Public
EPS wins at the Ostrava Regional Court.
On the basis of a suit by the civic association Lučina (in Havířov, Ostrava's edge city), represented by an EPS lawyer, the Ostrava Regional Court delivered a verdict that could become a significant precedent in the right-to-information field. The court annulled decisions of the District Office in Karviná and the Havířov City Office. Both offices refused to provide Lučina information on suspect construction activities within the Lučina River Meanders natural-heritage site. The office justified the refusal by stating that the Right to Information Act applies neither to its decision files nor to building documentation. The first appeals authority approved this approach. Both offices based their statements on an unlawful interpretation of the Act by the Ministry for Local Development, which was being applied nationwide and blocking citizens' access to information.
The court accepted the plaintiff's principal argument, and the verdict can be used in future cases as well.

A Court Confirmed EPS's Interpretation of the Law
State and municipal authorities may not classify information as "internal" at whim.
VITA, a civic association in Ostrava, requested from the city council the materials on whose basis the council decided about the lending of ground for a park within the Fifejdy housing project. At first, the council refused to provide the information, claiming that their meetings are non-public per the Act on Municipalities (which act, however, affects not one whit the right to receive written materials and information). After VITA filed an appeal, the council refused the information again, this time claiming that it related "exclusively to internal Council instructions."
The council did not, however, justify this claim in any way in its ruling. Moreover, in light of the requested materials' contents, the claim was visibly untruthful and a ploy. EPS therefore filed a suit at the Regional Court, which annulled the council's unlawful decision. The council eventually provided VITA the information (more than a year and a half after the original request).

A Successful Fight for Information from the Šumava National Park Administration
There were secrets hidden in those hills.
The administrations of the Šumava National Park and the Šumava Nature Preserve refused, for two years, to make accessible documents called under Czech law "forest management plans," which contain information on planned cutting, planting, etc. in forests on park territory. They also kept secret their contracts with the firms that log on park territory. Friends of the Earth-Czech Republic thus turned to us for help.
We filed four information requests and engaged for two years in procedures in which applications were first denied, we filed appeals, we negotiated in person, etc., until we finally forced the Ministry of Environment to decide on our appeals. And it did so in our favor. This is the first case where a state forest-administration authority has provided complete forest management plans, and it even gave them digitally (also despite officials' vehement resistance)-on CD!

EPS Versus the Ministry of Industry and Commerce
In March 2001, the Ministry of Industry and Commerce released an annual report that falsely informed regarding its denial of information. The ministry stated, for example, that it always denies information via official rulings, so that they can be appealed. Yet in fact it had not done so in four cases known to us. It likewise stated that only two right-to-information suits had been filed against it, even though EPS knows of four. We sent Minister of Industry Grégr an open letter, which the ministry handled as an official complaint, and confirmed in May 2001 as justified. One consequence of this was the firing of top officials at the ministry. An EPS press release led to the publishing of an article in a national newspaper and an article by EPS member Vítězslav Dohnal in the analytical weekly Respekt, on our experience with exercising the right to information.