Czechia

Whether a short visit needs a visa is not in Czech law. Regulation (EU) 2018/1806 carries two annexes: nationals of Annex I countries need a visa to cross the external border, nationals of Annex II countries do not for stays of no more than 90 days in any 180-day period. Section 5(1) of Act No. 326/1999 Sb. hands the whole question over - the conditions of entry and the border check are set by the directly applicable Union instrument - and the words ninety days in any 180-day period appear nowhere in the Act at all. What the Act adds is a reporting duty that catches visitors out: section 93(1) requires a third-country national to report the place of their stay to the police within three working days of entry, and it is discharged only if the accommodation provider has already done it. A Union citizen has thirty days, and only where the stay will run longer than thirty. Means of support are not a round figure either: section 13 sets them as multiples of the subsistence minimum, which is a separate Act.

Czechia has no passive-income or self-sufficiency residence category. Section 30(1) of Act No. 326/1999 Sb. looks generous - a long-stay visa is granted to a foreign national who intends to stay for a purpose requiring a stay longer than three months - and the Act never lists what those purposes may be. Section 42(1) then converts that visa into a long-term residence permit after a year, but only while the same purpose continues. What closes the gap is not the statute but the Ministry of the Interior, whose portal says in terms that not every purpose can be a ground for granting a long-stay visa, and whose own index of long-stay visas and long-term residence permits names family, business, study, seasonal work, medical treatment, sport, research, culture, further education, investment, the intra-corporate transfer cards, the employee card and the blue card - and nothing for a person who simply has money. Money is still a condition of every one of them: section 31(1) requires evidence of the purpose, of funds under section 13, and of accommodation.

There is no retirement residence permit in Czech law. Reading the complete list of long-term residence purposes in sections 42a to 42n of Act No. 326/1999 Sb., a pension is named nowhere and age appears exactly twice. Section 42a(1)(d) lets a lone foreign national over 65 - or, at any age, one who cannot look after themselves for health reasons - join a parent or a child who already has a residence permit here; that is a family route and it needs a relative in Czechia, not an income. Section 87g(1)(b) gives permanent residence to a Union citizen who reaches pension age while working here, which is a free-movement right and is not open to a third-country national. Everyone else is left with the general long-stay visa under section 30(1), which requires a purpose the Ministry accepts, and the Ministry's list has no retirement on it.

Employment is the one route Czech law builds out in detail. The employee card under section 42g of Act No. 326/1999 Sb. is a long-term residence permit that also authorises the work, for the position it was issued for; the blue card does the same for high qualifications, and two further cards cover intra-corporate transfers. Section 89 of Act No. 435/2004 Sb. puts it the other way round - a foreign national may be taken into employment if they hold a valid employee card, intra-corporate transfer card or blue card - so the two Acts meet at the same document. The conditions are concrete: the job must be one of the vacancies in the central register open to employee-card holders, the contract must pay at least the monthly minimum wage whatever the hours, and weekly working time in each basic employment relationship must be at least fifteen hours. What is unusual is above all of that. Section 181b lets the government cap, by regulation, how many applications may be lodged at a given embassy in a year, spread evenly across the calendar months; Government Regulation No. 220/2019 Sb. sets those caps embassy by embassy, and at Dresden the number is zero unless the applicant falls inside a carve-out. An application made once the month's allocation is gone is not refused - it is inadmissible, the proceedings never start, and the papers and the fee come back.

Czechia has an investment residence permit and the Act that creates it states no amount. Section 42n of Act No. 326/1999 Sb. requires a significant investment - new jobs in a number set by government regulation, and money in an amount set by government regulation - and leaves both blank. Government Regulation No. 223/2017 Sb. fills them in: at least 75,000,000 CZK invested in Czechia and at least 20 new jobs created here. Up to 60 per cent of the money may be replaced by other property whose ownership, origin and expert valuation the applicant proves. A shareholder applicant must hold at least a 30 per cent share. The route differs from every other in one respect that matters more than the figures: section 1(4) of Government Regulation No. 220/2019 Sb. says applications for the investment permit may be lodged without limit, where business visas and employee cards are rationed embassy by embassy and month by month. The investor is also outside the integration-course duty that catches other long-term residents.

A student's residence rests on two provisions reading in opposite directions. Section 42d of Act No. 326/1999 Sb. opens the long-term residence permit to a foreign national intending to stay for more than three months where the stay is study within the meaning of section 64 - and section 64 is a closed list: accredited university programmes, preparatory language and subject courses run by a public university, secondary and higher vocational education inside an exchange programme, scholarship stays under treaties or ministry programmes, and traineeships. A private language course that is not one of those is not study. Against that, the work side is unusually open. Section 98(j) of Act No. 435/2004 Sb. needs no permit, card or authorisation for a foreign national who is systematically preparing for a future occupation, and section 5(d) of the same Act defines that as full-time study at a secondary school, conservatory, higher vocational school, a language school with the right to hold the state language examination, or full-time university study, holidays included. There is no hour cap. The trade-off comes later: under section 68(2)(d) time spent on a study permit counts only half towards the five years for permanent residence.

Czech residence law knows nothing about ancestry. The long-term residence purposes in sections 42a to 42n of Act No. 326/1999 Sb. include family reunification with a relative who already lives here, but nothing that turns a Czech or Czechoslovak grandparent into a right to move. What exists instead sits one step further on, in the nationality Act, and it is more generous than the residence route it replaces. Section 31(3) of Act No. 186/2013 Sb. lets a person at least one of whose parents or grandparents is or was a former Czech or Czechoslovak citizen within section 31(1) acquire Czech citizenship by declaration - no residence, no language examination, no waiting period, and no deadline, because the one-year windows in this Act are in its transitional sections 72 and 73 and not in section 31. The exclusions are historical and specific: a loss of Czechoslovak citizenship under the presidential decree on persons of German and Hungarian nationality or under the Soviet treaty on Transcarpathian Ukraine does not count, and a declarant who is a Slovak citizen on the day of the declaration is out.

Which rule applies to a spouse depends on whom they married, and the difference is large. The spouse of a foreign national with a residence permit applies under section 42a(1)(a) of Act No. 326/1999 Sb. for a long-term residence permit for family cohabitation - a national route with the Act's own documents, fees and waiting. The spouse of a Czech citizen registered for permanent residence here does not: section 15a(2) says a foreign national standing in one of the relationships in section 15a(1) to such a Czech citizen is a family member of a Union citizen for the purposes of the Act, which puts them on the free-movement track in sections 87a to 87h. That is the opposite of the reverse discrimination several member states practise, where a national's third-country spouse is treated worse than a Union citizen's. The practical consequences follow immediately: the application is to the Ministry for a residence card rather than for a long-term permit, the fee in item 162(e) of the fee tariff is 200 CZK rather than the 2,500 CZK a long-term permit costs, section 85 of Act No. 435/2004 Sb. takes the spouse of a Czech citizen out of the definition of a foreign national for employment purposes, and permanent residence arrives after five years of continuous temporary residence.

Free movement sits in its own chapter of Act No. 326/1999 Sb., sections 87a to 87h, and the first thing to notice is what it does not do. Section 87a(1) says the Ministry issues a Union citizen a registration certificate on their application - na jeho žádost - where they intend to stay for more than three months and have not endangered the security of the state or seriously disturbed public order. There is no duty to register and no resources test in the provision at all; what the Ministry may ask for is a travel document, photographs, proof of health insurance - not required where the purpose is employment, business or other gainful activity - and proof of accommodation. A family member who is not a Union citizen is in a different position: section 87b(1) requires them to apply for a temporary residence permit, and section 87b(2) gives them three months from entry to do it. Permanent residence comes after five years of continuous temporary residence under section 87g(1)(a), with shorter paths for those who reach pension age or become severely disabled while working here. The duty that does exist is elsewhere and is easily missed: section 93(2) requires a Union citizen to report their address to the police within thirty days where the stay will run longer than thirty.

Act No. 186/2013 Sb. says in four words what most nationality laws leave implicit: there is no legal entitlement to the grant of Czech citizenship. Section 12 states it, and everything after it is a set of conditions that make a grant possible rather than due. Section 14(1) counts from permanent residence, not from arrival: five years of it, three for a citizen of a Union state, or a period that together with immediately preceding lawful residence reaches ten years. Section 14(2) adds a presence quota rather than an absence rule - the applicant must show they were actually in the country for at least half of that period, with absences of up to two consecutive months, or six for a serious reason such as pregnancy, illness, study or a work trip, counted in. Language is B1 under Decree No. 433/2013 Sb., with a separate examination on the constitutional system and Czech realities; both are waived for anyone under 15 or over 65. Section 14(7) asks for three years of proven income, its sources and the tax paid on it, and section 14(8) for three years without significant dependence on social assistance. Nothing in the Act asks the applicant to give up another nationality.

Section 2 of Act No. 586/1992 Sb. gives two alternative tests and defines both of them in the same section, which is rarer than it sounds. A person is a Czech tax resident if they have a bydliště here or habitually stay here; a resident is taxed on worldwide income, a non-resident only on Czech-source income. Habitual stay is a count: at least 183 days in the calendar year, continuously or in several periods, and every started day of presence counts. Bydliste is not an address but an intention - the place where the taxpayer has a permanent flat in circumstances from which it may be inferred that they intend to stay in that flat permanently. The two tests are independent, so a person with a permanent home here is resident on day one, with no day count to reach. The Act then carves out a group by purpose rather than by time: people who stay in Czechia only to study or for medical treatment are non-residents even where they habitually stay here.

Czech law gives a consumer a right to a bank account and ties it to lawful residence in a member state rather than to residence here. Section 210(1) of Act No. 370/2017 Sb. requires a provider, once a consumer who is a person lawfully residing in a member state asks for a basic payment account and shows the statutory conditions are met, to put a draft contract in front of them without undue delay and in any event within ten working days, or to refuse on one of the listed grounds. The account must carry cash deposits and withdrawals, credit transfers including standing orders, direct debits, card payments, a debit card and internet access to the account; section 211 forbids tying it to any paid service outside that list. Section 219 forbids discrimination on grounds of nationality or place of residence when a payment account is opened or operated. The limit on all of this is the anti-money-laundering Act: section 8(1)(a) of Act No. 253/2008 Sb. requires the first identification of a natural person to be carried out in their physical presence, and section 15(1) requires the business relationship to be refused where identification cannot be done.

Section 2(1) of Act No. 48/1997 Sb. draws the line in one sentence: an insured person is someone with permanent residence in Czechia, or someone without it who is an employee of an employer seated or permanently resident here - plus a short list that includes research-permit holders, asylum and subsidiary protection holders, and people the coordination regulations assign to Czechia. A long-term residence permit on its own is not on that list. A self-employed person, a family member who does not work, a student and a person living on their own money therefore stand outside the public system and have to buy commercial cover under section 180j of Act No. 326/1999 Sb. That provision sets a floor of 400,000 EUR per claim, in euros, with no excess borne by the insured. For the first ninety days after entry, cover bought abroad is accepted; after that section 180j(5) requires comprehensive cover from an insurer licensed to write it in Czechia, and section 180j(6) requires the same of anyone applying inside the country or extending. Comprehensive means something defined: care without direct payment by the insured, from which preventive and follow-up care and care connected with pregnancy and childbirth may not be excluded.

Section 104(2) of Act No. 361/2000 Sb. says which documents prove a driving entitlement in Czechia: a Czech licence, a licence issued by another member state, a licence issued by a foreign state under the Vienna 1968 or Geneva 1949 Convention, an international licence issued by a foreign state under those Conventions, and - only for holders of diplomatic privileges - a licence conforming to neither. A licence from a state outside both Conventions therefore proves nothing here unless its holder is a diplomat. For a member state licence the exchange is voluntary: section 116(1) says a holder with normal residence in Czechia may ask the municipal office. For everything else it is compulsory and the window is short. Section 116(3) obliges the holder of a foreign-state licence who has permanent residence here, or temporary residence for longer than a year, to apply for an exchange within three months of being granted that residence - and section 118(2) says a foreign licence whose holder has not applied does not authorise driving at all. Three months is the shortest window of any country in this corpus that states one.

Czechia does not decide this. Personal property imported by someone transferring their normal residence from a third country into the customs territory enters free of import duties on conditions set by a directly applicable Union regulation: six months' possession and, for durable goods, use at the former residence; a continuous twelve months of normal residence outside the customs territory; and entry for free circulation within twelve months of the move. Alcohol, tobacco, commercial means of transport and trade equipment other than portable instruments of the applied or liberal arts get no relief at all.