K možnosti přiznat volební právo cizincům
On the Possibility to Grant the Election Rights to the Foreigners in the Czech Republic

Summary/Abstract: The article deals with the problem of the real matter of the citizenship and the election rights in the current times. Currently the election rights in the Czech Republic are granted just to the citizens of the republic. The only exclusion is the right to vote and to be elected to the municipal assemblies. The possible extent of these rights to some groups of foreigners could be done by a law, no change of the Constitution is needful. The current legal solution is based on classical premise, that just citizens are members of the political nation, equipped with some special rights, which are balanced by equal duties. This classical view on the matter of citizenship, what the more – active citizenship, is generally out-of-date. The starting point of the way, how the society works nowadays, is that the election rights are a citizen’s rights to participate, if he or she wants. No civic duty is in the game. Also other citizen’s duties are getting more and more weak, or are even sleeping. This way the citizen’s right and duty to participate on the management of the state became the privilege in the last sixty or seventy years in Europe. On one hand we have a group of privileged citizens, who did not deserve to be so privileged by their own acting. On the other hand we have other group, foreigners from the European Union countries with the permanent residence permit, who are encumbered by the duties resulted from the legal system and the election’s result, without any possibility to change their fate. These foreigners can obtain a permanent residence permit according to the Czech law just in the case, if they have some special tight to the Czech Republic or the Czech society. Usually the reason is connecting the families or the work in the Czech Republic. These foreigners participate on the life in the Czech Republic, they help to build it up and they must to pay their duties to the Czech laws. In their case the granting of the full election rights would mean equalization and removing different treatment, which is in fact unjustifiable.

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