Review hearing in the Czech Republic: who acts for the party

A CFO of a foreign parent receives notice that a Czech subsidiary's insolvency administrator has convened a review hearing for a claim filed three weeks earlier. No one on the finance team has attended a Czech insolvency review hearing before, and the immediate question is simple: who acts for the party once the date is fixed.

At a review hearing the insolvency administrator leads the process: it examines each filed claim, records any dispute, and the court enters the outcome in the insolvency register. Attendance by the creditor is optional unless the claim is disputed, in which case a response is due within the fixed deadline that follows the hearing.

This page sets out who convenes the hearing and acts on the record, what deadlines bind a foreign creditor before and after it, what the claim file must contain, and the point at which a CFO should act rather than wait.

Who acts for the party at a Czech insolvency review hearing?

The insolvency administrator convenes and runs the review hearing, examining each filed claim against the debtor's records and stating whether it is recognised or disputed; the court then enters that outcome in the insolvency register. The creditor's own role is limited to being reachable and, where disputed, responding within the deadline that follows.

A foreign party often assumes the hearing works like a settlement conference where both sides negotiate a position. It does not. The administrator's view of each claim is formed largely from the debtor's accounting records and any earlier correspondence, and the hearing itself records that position rather than debating it in most cases. Where the claim is undisputed, no one from the creditor side needs to appear, and the claim moves toward distribution on the schedule the proceeding sets for recognised claims. Where it is disputed, failure to react within the deadline that follows the hearing closes the route to having the claim recognised in this proceeding, regardless of how sound the underlying contract was.

Representation is permitted but not automatic: a statutory representative of a foreign company, or a person holding a power of attorney, may act for the creditor at every stage, including registering the claim and receiving notice of a dispute. The duties of statutory bodies near insolvency and the duties of a foreign creditor's own representative are not the same set of obligations, and mixing them up is a frequent source of missed deadlines.

Does a foreign creditor need a Czech representative?

No rule requires a foreign creditor to appoint a Czech representative before filing or attending a review hearing, but every notice, including the hearing date and any dispute, still has to reach the creditor abroad in time to act on it, and neither the administrator nor the court extends that timetable for distance.

A representative resident in the Czech Republic – an advocate, or in straightforward cases an employee of a local subsidiary holding a power of attorney – receives service faster and can respond to a dispute inside the deadline without the document first crossing a border. Where the claim is substantial, or the debtor's business spans several proceedings, going without a local point of contact rarely saves anything worth the risk. For creditors within the European Union a separate cross-border notification mechanism applies to how the opening of the proceeding itself is communicated, which is a distinct question from whether the creditor also needs someone acting locally at the review stage.

Translation is a related and separate question. Documents attached to the claim are, as a rule, expected in Czech, or with a Czech translation attached; foreign-language originals without translation are the most common technical reason a claim is challenged on its face before its substance is even reached.

A claim can be perfectly valid and still lose the hearing on a translation it never had.

A foreign parent that only learns of a Czech subsidiary's review hearing from a forwarded notice is already behind a clock that runs independently of head office approval cycles. LISTINA prepares a factual report on the claim file, the register entries and the deadlines that apply to a named proceeding, delivered within five to eight working days; representation before the court, where the claim is disputed, is handled by a collaborating advocate. Write to info@listinafirm.com.

The route from claim filing to the review hearing: the binding deadlines

Three dates control this stage and none of them shifts for a party who missed the notice: the deadline to register the claim once the insolvency proceeding opens, the date the court fixes for the review hearing, and the deadline to respond once a claim is marked disputed.

• Insolvency proceeding opens and is published in the insolvency register – the claim registration clock starts running.
• Creditor files the claim with the insolvency court within the registration deadline, using the prescribed form.
• Administrator reviews the claim against the debtor's records and prepares the list for the hearing.
• Court holds the review hearing; the administrator states whether each claim is recognised or disputed.
• Where disputed, the creditor, or a party disputing an already-recognised claim, has a fixed deadline to bring an incidental dispute before the same court.

A claim recognised at the hearing without dispute needs no further filing to take part in distribution. A claim marked disputed and left unanswered within its deadline drops out of the proceeding as if it had never been filed – the underlying debt may still exist, but the deadline once passed cannot be restored by any later filing in the same proceeding. A separate complication arises where the administrator's dispute of a claim is bound up with a clawback action already brought against the same creditor over an earlier payment; the review hearing does not resolve that question, and the two run on independent timetables. Where a foreign court's judgment needs to be recognised as part of establishing the underlying debt, the mechanics differ from this domestic timetable; see the note on recognition of a Czech judgment abroad for how the two tracks interact.

The register records what happened at the hearing, not what should have happened.

What must the claim file contain before the hearing?

The administrator decides from what is filed, not from what a creditor later explains by telephone. A complete claim file is the only thing standing between a claim that is simply recorded as recognised and one that is pulled into a dispute running on its own separate deadline.

• The claim form itself, completed in the prescribed structure, stating the legal basis and the amount claimed.
• The contract, invoice or other instrument the claim is based on, in the original.
• A Czech translation of any foreign-language document attached to the claim.
• Evidence of the amount – statements, correspondence, or a calculation where interest or a penalty is included.
• A power of attorney, where the creditor is represented, naming the representative and the scope of the mandate.
• Proof of service or delivery where the underlying debt depended on a notice having reached the debtor.

Once the administrator records a claim as disputed at the hearing, the insolvency register keeps the entry in that state until an incidental dispute is resolved or the deadline to bring one lapses; a creditor cannot quietly resubmit a better-documented version of the same claim once that entry stands. Preparing the file to the standard the hearing expects, before rather than after a dispute arises, is the point in the process where the creditor genuinely controls the outcome.

The hearing does not ask for the missing document twice.

An Austrian supplier's claim was excluded from a Czech subsidiary's insolvency proceeding after the registration deadline lapsed one week before anyone at the parent company reviewed the notice (spring 2025); the underlying invoices were never in dispute, only the date.

A claim file assembled from scanned emails and a partial invoice history is unlikely to survive a dispute intact. LISTINA reviews the claim documentation and the debtor's public and register-held records before filing, and delivers a factual report within five to eight working days that the creditor or its advocate can act on directly. Write to info@listinafirm.com; where the claim is disputed, representation before the insolvency court is provided by a collaborating advocate.

Act, wait or contest: what should a CFO decide before the hearing?

Once the hearing date and the administrator's likely position are known, a creditor is in one of four positions, each with its own next step and its own deadline: file, monitor, prepare a dispute, or assess what survives after an exclusion.

• Claim not yet filed, registration deadline still open → file the claim with the insolvency court → the creditor or its representative acts → before the registration deadline expires.
• Claim filed and undisputed as the hearing approaches → confirm the entry in the insolvency register and keep evidence current → the creditor's finance team → no fixed deadline, but before the hearing date.
• Claim marked disputed at the hearing → prepare and file the incidental dispute → the creditor, through a representative or advocate → within the deadline that runs from the hearing.
• Claim excluded after a lapsed deadline → assess whether the debt survives outside this proceeding → the creditor with its advocate → as soon as the exclusion is confirmed in the register.

What cannot be established from the file and the register before the hearing is how the administrator will actually classify a borderline claim, or whether another creditor will raise a dispute of its own; both depend on a judgment the administrator forms on the day, not on anything published in advance.

A Polish creditor's representative confirmed the claim amount directly against the debtor's ledger extract two weeks before the hearing and arrived with the calculation already reconciled, avoiding the dispute the administrator had flagged as likely (autumn 2025) – the file, not the argument, settled it.

Reading the file and the register before deciding which of the four positions applies is exactly the exercise set out in how our factual reports are prepared, and it is the step that determines whether the hearing is a formality or the start of a dispute.

Frequently asked questions

What does a review hearing cost in time?

The hearing itself is usually a single sitting, but the deadlines around it run for weeks: the claim must be registered before the hearing is set, and where a claim is disputed, the incidental dispute has its own deadline running from the hearing date. The total time from filing to a resolved dispute is normally measured in months rather than in the length of the sitting itself.

Which form is used?

The claim is filed on the prescribed insolvency claim form, stating the legal basis, the amount and any security. The same form is used regardless of whether the creditor is Czech or foreign; a foreign creditor typically attaches a Czech translation of the supporting documents to the same filing.

Is a representative required?

No representative is legally required to file or attend, but a foreign creditor without one relies entirely on documents reaching it abroad in time to meet each deadline. Where the claim is disputed, a representative or advocate who can act inside the Czech Republic is, in practice, the difference between meeting the deadline and missing it.

What if the party is abroad?

Service still runs on the same deadlines; distance from the Czech Republic is not a ground the court or the administrator extends. A local representative, or at minimum a Czech address for service, is the usual way a foreign party keeps the deadlines workable rather than theoretical.

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.

Klára Bartošová works on insolvency in numbers: registers, claims, distributions.

Before the hearing date is fixed, the file that reaches the administrator is the only variable a CFO fully controls. LISTINA prepares a factual report on the claim, the debtor's register entries and the applicable deadlines, delivered within five to eight working days, so the file goes in complete rather than provisional; where a dispute follows, representation before the insolvency court is provided by a collaborating advocate. Write to info@listinafirm.com.