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Litigation and arbitration in the Czech Republic

A foreign owner discovers that a Czech counterparty has stopped paying, and the contract names Czech courts as the forum. The clock on the claim does not pause while a decision is made in another country. Missing a procedural deadline in the first weeks can end the claim before it is ever heard on its merits.

Litigation and arbitration in the Czech Republic proceeds under Czech civil procedure and, where the parties have agreed to it, under Czech arbitration law. The forum, the language of the proceedings and the deadlines that apply follow the jurisdiction clause and the nature of the claim. A civil action opens with a filing that must meet formal requirements within a fixed statutory period, and that period runs regardless of where the claimant is based or how the dispute arose.

This page sets out what this practice covers and what it excludes, the route a claim follows from the first document to a decision, what the file must contain before that route begins, where foreign parties usually lose time along the way, and what we deliver as a factual report before an advocate is engaged.

What litigation and arbitration in the Czech Republic covers – and what it does not

This practice covers civil disputes brought before Czech courts and arbitration proceedings seated in the Czech Republic: contract claims, tort claims, disputes over performance, and the recognition or enforcement of a foreign judgment or arbitral award. It does not cover criminal proceedings, administrative appeals against a public authority, or insolvency filings, each of which follows a separate procedure with its own forum and its own deadlines.

It also does not cover the substantive rights a shareholder holds inside a company. A dispute over a squeeze-out price, a minority shareholder's claim to information, or a challenge to how a general meeting resolved a matter belongs to a different practice, even where the same parties end up in the same courtroom. What sits inside this practice is the mechanics of the dispute itself – which court or tribunal hears it, on what timetable, and on what evidence – not the substance of every claim that might eventually be argued there.

A foreign claimant typically reaches this practice from one of three positions. The first is a contract that names a Czech forum, whether a Czech court or a Czech-seated arbitration. The second is a Czech debtor who has stopped paying and against whom a claim now has to be brought. The third is a Czech judgment or arbitral award that needs to be enforced abroad, or a foreign one that needs to be enforced inside the Czech Republic.

Each of these three positions starts the clock differently, and this practice treats them as variants of the same route rather than as separate procedures. The deadlines that follow a filing, a service, or a request for enforcement share the same underlying structure regardless of which of the three brought the file here, and a party that understands the structure once can apply it to whichever position it is actually in.

The route: from the first document to the outcome, with the binding deadlines

The route runs through a fixed sequence, and each stage carries its own deadline that does not extend to accommodate a foreign party's distance from the Czech Republic. Missing the deadline at any stage does not pause the case – it closes that stage permanently and, in most instances, cannot be restored by a later showing that the underlying claim is well founded.

The deadlines above are not negotiable by agreement between the parties in most instances; they follow directly from the applicable procedural rules, whether that is Czech civil procedure or the arbitration rules the parties chose. A party that treats a deadline as advisory rather than binding discovers the difference only once the stage in question is already closed and cannot be reopened.

The deadline that a foreign party miscalculates most often is the one that starts on service inside the Czech Republic, not on the day a party abroad actually reads the document.

Interim measures deserve separate attention because they run on their own, shorter calendar. A request to freeze a debtor's assets or preserve evidence has to be filed early enough that the measure can still have an effect – a freezing order issued after the assets have already moved protects nothing. Where the assets sit in more than one jurisdiction, the timing has to account for how long each register takes to record the measure, not only how long the court takes to grant it.

Once a decision becomes enforceable, a separate calendar starts for enforcement itself, and that calendar is not automatically extended by the fact that the debtor is based outside the Czech Republic. A foreign judgment creditor who waits for a convenient moment to begin enforcement risks finding that the debtor's position, and its assets, have already changed.

A claim that is one week from its filing deadline is not a claim with time to spare – it is a claim that needs the file closed now. LISTINA prepares the factual report on the deadline structure and the evidentiary record before the advocate files; representation before a Czech court, where it becomes necessary, is provided by a collaborating advocate. Write to info@listinafirm.com.

What the file must contain – the evidentiary core

A Czech court or tribunal decides on what is in the file, not on what a party asserts happened outside it. The file has to carry the paper trail of the underlying relationship and the paper trail of any attempt to resolve the dispute before the claim was filed, because both are read as evidence of what each side actually did, not only what each side now says.

Two of these items cause the most difficulty for a foreign claimant. The first is the correspondence putting the debtor on notice – a demand sent without a clear date, or sent to an address the debtor had already changed, does little to establish that notice was given. The second is the asset record: a court asked to grant an interim measure over unidentified assets has nothing concrete to freeze, and the request is likely to be refused on that ground alone.

A German supplier reached the enforcement stage four months faster after its asset record on the Czech debtor was reconstructed before the claim was filed, rather than during the proceedings themselves (autumn 2025).

Documents assembled after the claim is filed can still be submitted, and Czech civil procedure does not require the entire file to exist on day one. What changes with a file built in advance is what the first hearing can achieve: an interim measure requested with the debtor's assets already identified is a materially different request from one made without them, and the difference shows up in how quickly the court is prepared to act on it.

Translations deserve a separate note. A document submitted in a language other than the language of the proceedings is treated by the court as if it were not there until an adequate translation accompanies it, and preparing that translation after the claim is already before the court adds a delay a foreign party rarely budgets for in advance.

Where a foreign party loses time – three recurring failures

Three patterns recur across cross-border claims, and each one costs weeks or months that the deadline structure inside this practice does not give back once they are lost.

The first is treating the jurisdiction clause as settled once it is written into the contract. A clause can still be challenged on formal grounds, and a challenge – even one that ultimately fails – delays the substantive hearing by months while the forum question is resolved first.

The second is assuming that service abroad follows the same calendar as service inside the Czech Republic. It does not; the method of service determines when the response period starts, and a party that waits for its own postal confirmation can lose weeks it did not know it was losing.

The third is filing the claim before checking who currently holds the defendant's assets. A judgment against a company with nothing left to enforce against is a judgment, not a recovery – personal liability of a director or a related party has to be established separately, and that separate route carries its own deadlines that do not run from the same date as the original claim.

A jurisdiction challenge that ultimately fails still delays the substantive hearing by months – the delay is real even where the argument was not.

Each of the three failures shares a common cause: a step was taken on the assumption that the Czech procedure would resemble the procedure at home. It rarely does at the level of detail that determines whether a deadline was met.

A jurisdiction challenge or a missed service deadline is the kind of failure that shows up only after it has already cost the case months. LISTINA produces the factual record – service history, corporate status, asset position – before that record is needed in a hearing. The report is delivered within a stated number of working days; write to info@listinafirm.com.

What we deliver before a lawyer is engaged – the report, its scope, its limit

Before an advocate is instructed, LISTINA produces a factual report: the deadline structure that applies to the specific claim, the documents the file currently holds measured against the documents it needs, and the position of the defendant as it currently stands in the public registers. The register keeps the entry from the day it is filed, not from the day a party finally checks it, so the report states what is on record now, not what a party assumed was still true.

In one file opened in spring 2025, a Czech distributor's registered address had changed twice within the preceding year without the foreign supplier's knowledge; the report that traced the change before the claim was filed kept the service address correct on the first attempt, avoiding the delay a failed service would otherwise have caused.

The limit of knowledge: a factual report drawn from documents and registers cannot establish what a court will decide, cannot confirm that a debtor's assets recorded today will still be there when enforcement starts, and cannot substitute for legal advice on how a specific clause will be read. Where the matter needs that judgment, it is a question for the collaborating advocate, not for the report.

What the report can do is remove the guesswork from the parts of the case that are not matters of judgment: dates, filings, registered facts, the current standing of the counterparty. What is decided by a court or a tribunal remains a question of law and of argument, and that question is addressed by the advocate who takes the file forward once the factual ground has been established.

How this practice connects to the neighbouring one

This practice describes how a dispute proceeds – the forum, the deadlines, the evidence. It stops at the point where a shareholder's substantive rights come into question: a squeeze-out price, a minority shareholder's claim to information, or a dispute over how corporate decisions were taken belongs to the corporate practice next to this one.

The two meet often in the same file. A shareholder dispute can turn into litigation once one side files a claim, and a litigation file can surface a corporate question that has to be resolved on its own terms before the litigation continues. Knowing which practice governs which part of the file determines which deadlines apply and whether a set-off raised against joint and several debtors is even available as a defence.

A claim and a corporate dispute filed in the same court do not automatically share a timetable – each follows the deadlines of its own procedure.

The practical consequence is that a foreign party should identify, before filing anything, which parts of its dispute are procedural – where this practice applies – and which parts turn on a shareholder's substantive rights, where a different evidentiary standard and a different timetable apply. Treating the two as one file with one calendar is itself one of the recurring failures already described above.

Frequently asked questions

Which step comes first?

The claim, or a request for arbitration, comes first, and it has to meet formal requirements set by Czech civil procedure or the chosen arbitration rules before it is accepted for service. An interim measure, where one is needed to preserve assets or evidence, can be requested alongside or even before the main filing, on its own shorter calendar.

What is decided by whom?

A Czech court decides civil claims that fall within its jurisdiction; an arbitral tribunal decides claims where the parties have validly agreed to arbitration instead. Procedural questions, such as whether a jurisdiction clause holds, are decided by the forum itself before the substantive dispute is ever reached on its merits.

Where do foreign parties lose time?

Most commonly at service abroad, where the calendar for a response does not follow the party's own postal confirmation, and at the point of filing, where a claim against an already asset-stripped company produces a judgment without a recovery. Both failures are avoidable with a factual check made before filing, not after.

What is prepared in advance?

The contract and its jurisdiction clause, the correspondence establishing notice to the debtor, a current record of the debtor's registered status and known assets, and translations of any document not in the language of the proceedings. A report assembling these before filing is typically delivered within a stated number of working days.

All pages in this practice

LISTINA produces factual reports from documents and public registers. It does not provide legal advice and does not represent parties. Where a matter requires representation before a Czech court or authority, it is handled by a collaborating advocate.

Tereza Kolářová works on court practice, procedure and evidence. He writes on how a Czech case file is built and read.

A claim that names a Czech forum runs on a calendar that does not wait for a decision to be made abroad. LISTINA delivers the factual report – deadline structure, document check, registered position of the defendant – within a stated number of working days, before an advocate is instructed. Write to info@listinafirm.com; representation, where it becomes necessary, is provided by a collaborating advocate.

Tereza Kolářová · LISTINA ·

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