Immediate dismissal in the Czech Republic: step by step
An in-house counsel at a foreign parent gets a call on a Monday: the Czech subsidiary's finance officer has been caught diverting supplier payments, and local management wants the relationship ended the same week, not at the end of a notice period. Czech employment law does allow immediate dismissal, step by step, but the route runs on narrow grounds and a deadline that does not wait for internal sign-off.
Immediate dismissal ends a Czech employment relationship without a notice period, on grounds fixed by Czech labour legislation, and takes effect on delivery to the other party rather than through a court filing. The employer must act inside a two-track deadline running from actual knowledge of the reason and from when the reason arose; missing either branch closes the immediate route for that reason, leaving only ordinary termination.
This page sets out who may use immediate dismissal and where it goes, the deadline that governs it, the file it needs before delivery, and the point at which the decision stops being reversible.
What counts as grounds for immediate dismissal under Czech employment law?
The grounds run in two directions and are read narrowly by Czech courts. Employer-side immediate dismissal requires a particularly serious breach of duty or a criminal conviction meeting a statutory threshold; employee-side immediate dismissal requires unpaid wages past a fixed grace period or a documented health risk.
On the employer's side, the standard is not misconduct in general but a breach serious enough to make continuing the relationship even until the end of a notice period untenable. Poor performance, a single missed deadline, or a personality conflict with a manager does not reach it; falsifying records, diverting funds, or a serious safety violation typically does. On the employee's side, the trigger is concrete: the employer failed to pay wages, or part of them, within a fixed number of days after they fell due, or a medical opinion states that continued work threatens the employee's health.
No severance follows a dismissal on this ground when the employer is the one delivering it for gross breach; severance belongs to a different category of termination and does not attach here. The two-month deadline discussed below runs from actual knowledge of the conduct, not from suspicion or rumour, and once it passes the employer cannot revive immediate dismissal for the same conduct – it can only use ordinary termination or an agreement, both of which carry a notice period this route was meant to avoid.
The threshold question – whether a given breach is "particularly serious" – is answered case by case, not by a checklist; that is precisely where files that looked solid internally fail once tested.
Who files immediate dismissal, and where does it go?
There is no court filing at the point of dismissal itself: the notice is a written statement delivered directly to the other party, stating the ground with enough specificity that it can be tested later. Immediate dismissal sits alongside ordinary termination of Czech employment as one of the routes for ending the relationship, but it is the only one that takes effect on delivery rather than after a notice period runs.
Three steps precede delivery on the employer's side: confirming the facts and gathering the evidence that will support the ground if the dismissal is later challenged; obtaining the mandatory opinion of the works council or trade union where the employee is a member or the workplace has one; and delivering the written notice itself, by a method that can later prove delivery took place. Where the employee has been posted to work in another EU state, delivery follows the same domestic rule that would apply at home – the posting arrangement neither extends the deadline nor changes who receives the notice.
On the employee's side, the same logic runs in reverse: the employee delivers written notice to the employer once the grace period for unpaid wages has passed, without needing anyone's prior opinion.
A finance director who has already been suspended pending an internal review is not, by that fact alone, past the point where immediate dismissal is still available – but every week spent confirming the facts is a week off the two-month clock. LISTINA prepares a factual report setting out what the personnel file, payroll records and correspondence currently show, delivered within a stated number of working days, so the decision to deliver notice is made on documented ground rather than on the manager's sense of urgency. Where representation becomes necessary, it is handled by a collaborating advocate. Write to info@listinafirm.com.
What is the deadline, and what happens if it passes?
Czech labour legislation runs two deadlines side by side: a short one counted from actual knowledge of the ground, and a long one counted from when the ground arose, with a separate rule for a criminal conviction reached by final judgment. Both must still be open when the notice is delivered – the shorter one is the one that usually decides the matter.
If the short deadline passes – because internal review took too long, because the matter sat with a regional manager before reaching HR, or because a group compliance process ran on its own timetable – the immediate route closes for that ground even if the longer deadline has not run out. The file does not get a second attempt at immediate dismissal on the same facts; it converts into ordinary termination, with the notice period the employer was trying to avoid.
- Suspected gross breach discovered today → confirm the facts and assemble the evidence → HR and legal → within days, before the short deadline advances further
- Employee is a union member or the workplace has a works council → request the mandatory opinion → HR, then the employer → before delivery, inside the same window
- Wage unpaid past the statutory grace period → employee may deliver notice → the employee → within the deadline running from the missed payment
- Notice delivered → the dismissal takes effect on delivery → employer or employee → no court filing required unless the notice is later challenged
A deadline missed by internal process, not by the facts of the case, is still a deadline missed – the file rarely records why the delay happened, only that it did.
What must the file contain before the notice is delivered?
The file that supports a delivered notice needs to stand on its own if the dismissal is challenged, because unlike ordinary termination there is no notice period during which gaps can quietly be filled.
- the written notice itself, stating the specific ground and the date the employer learned of it
- the evidence supporting that ground – incident reports, internal correspondence, payroll or access records
- proof of delivery – registered post, personal handover with acknowledgement, or a data box record
- the works council or trade union opinion, where one was required
- the employment contract and any amendments defining the duty said to have been breached
Where a non-compete or a clause covered by transfer of undertaking and post-employment competition is in play, immediate dismissal does not by itself release the employee from it – that document sits in the file separately from the dismissal ground.
What cannot be established from documents alone: whether a given breach genuinely reaches the "particularly serious" threshold is a legal assessment made case by case, and the same file can support either conclusion depending on how the surrounding facts are weighed once the matter is tested.
A manufacturing subsidiary of a German group lost the option of immediate dismissal for a warehouse manager after an internal compliance review took five weeks to confirm the facts, pushing delivery past the point where it still fit inside the short deadline (summer 2025).
Act, wait, or stop: the decision point
Three positions are available once the facts are in front of counsel, and the deadline decides how long any of them stays open. Acting now fits a case where the ground is documented and the short deadline is still comfortably open. Waiting fits a case where the ground is plausible but the evidence is not yet assembled – provided the deadline allows the wait. Stopping fits a case where the conduct, however irritating, does not reach the threshold; ordinary termination or a mutual agreement then carries the matter, with a notice period attached.
Delivering an immediate dismissal that does not hold up converts the case into litigation over the validity of the notice, with the relationship treated as continuing until the matter is resolved – a position considerably harder and slower to unwind than the notice period the immediate route was meant to skip. For an in-house counsel running personnel matters across several jurisdictions – including management records in Spain – the Czech deadline runs independently of any other jurisdiction's timetable and does not pause for a parallel process elsewhere.
For a Spanish-owned retail group's Czech branch, an immediate dismissal delivered without a documented breach was set aside, and the branch ended up bearing the equivalent of the notice period it had tried to avoid (spring 2026).
Frequently asked questions
Where is immediate dismissal filed?
It is not filed with a court or an authority at the point of dismissal. It is a written notice delivered directly to the other party – the employer to the employee or the employee to the employer – stating the specific ground relied on and dated to show when the party learned of it.
How long does the court take?
A court is only involved if the notice is later challenged as invalid. That is a separate proceeding from the dismissal itself, and its length depends on the court's docket and the complexity of the evidence rather than on any fixed period tied to the dismissal.
Can the other side object?
Yes. The party who received the notice can dispute that the ground meets the required threshold or that the deadline was respected, and can ask a court to declare the dismissal invalid. This is a common misconception worth correcting: delivery of the notice ends the relationship in fact, but it does not settle the question in law until any challenge is resolved.
What follows the decision?
If unchallenged, the relationship ends on the date of delivery and the usual final settlements follow. If challenged and the notice is found invalid, the relationship is treated as having continued, with consequences for pay and registration that a notice-period termination would not have produced.
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.
Before a notice goes out, the question is rarely whether the conduct was wrong – it is whether the file, read cold by someone outside the room, still supports "particularly serious" and shows the deadline was met. LISTINA reviews the personnel file, payroll and correspondence against those two questions and delivers a factual report within a stated number of working days, before any notice is drafted. Representation, if the matter is later challenged, is handled by a collaborating advocate. info@listinafirm.com.