A Country Built on Scepticism
When people think of climate litigation, they rarely think of Czechia. For decades, the country has been defined by a deeply entrenched culture of climate scepticism. This scepticism is unique, as it is not primarily rooted in science denial, but in ideology. Following the collapse of communism in 1989, the free market became a symbol of newly won freedom. Powerful figures like former president Václav Klaus successfully framed environmental regulation as a threat to liberty. Environmentalists were at one point labelled by state intelligence as “subversive elements.”
This legacy persists. Mainstream Czech media tends to frame climate change not as a systemic crisis requiring emission cuts, but rather a more localised problem, which can be solved through tree planting and rainwater harvesting. The result is a public largely pacified by the idea that climate change is manageable and local, while the deeper political question of carbon reduction goes unaddressed. And yet, against this backdrop, something significant has begun to happen in Czech courtrooms.
A Constitutional Breakthrough and Its Limits
In April 2021, a coalition of plaintiffs (led by the civil society association Klimatická Žaloba ČR (Czech Climate Litigation)) joined by the municipality of Svatý Jan pod Skalou filed a landmark administrative lawsuit against the Czech government. The core claim was that the state’s failure to adopt adequate climate mitigation measures was a violation of their fundamental rights including the constitutional right to a favourable environment under Article 35(1) of the Czech Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms.
What made the case distinctive was its use of a carbon budget framework. The plaintiffs argued that the state’s current emissions trajectory consumed far more than Czechia’s scientifically justified share of the remaining global carbon budget needed to limit warming to 1.5°C. This approach treated the atmosphere as a finite resource and its exhaustion as a direct harm to present and future citizens alike.
The legal sources were layered: Alongside the Czech Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms, the plaintiffs invoked the Paris Agreement, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) (Articles 2 and 8), and the Act on the Environment (No. 17/1992 Coll.), arguing that the state had immediate obligations to prevent irreversible harm.
In June 2022, the Municipal Court in Prague issued a ruling that surprised many observers. It recognised climate stability as an essential component of the right to a favourable environment. That would be the first time any Czech court had drawn that connection and ordered the state to reduce emissions by at least 55% by 2030 relative to 1990 levels.
The victory was short-lived. In February 2023, the Supreme Administrative Court overturned the ruling. Its reasoning was telling: the Charter and the Paris Agreement were too “general” to support such a specific, quantified reduction target without a domestic Climate Act to give them legal backing. Without statutory implementation, the court held, constitutional environmental rights could not be directly enforced in this way. This is a tension familiar to climate lawyers across Europe: the gap between ambitious rights-based claims and the procedural scaffolding required to make them stick.
Children as Legal Bridges to the Future
What gives the Czech litigation its particular moral force is its treatment of future generations. The Preamble frames the drafters' own sense of shared accountability. They described themselves as “mindful of their share of responsibility toward future generations for the fate of all life on Earth”. The plaintiffs in Klimatická Žaloba ČR built on this foundation: The Municipality of Svatý Jan pod Skalou noted that nearly 20% of its residents are children who will face the worst consequences of today’s inaction.
The carbon budget approach is intergenerational justice in legal form: It quantifies the degree to which current policy disproportionately burdens future generations by foreclosing their options. It transforms the abstract moral claim of “we owe something to the future generations” into a justiciable one.
Why This Matters Beyond Czechia
The Czech cases do not exist in a vacuum. They are part of a growing transnational wave of rights-based climate litigation (from the Urgenda judgement in the Netherlands to the European Court of Human Rights’ landmark ruling in KlimaSeniorinnen v. Switzerland). The KlimaSeniorinnen case is particularly significant for Czechia as it established that Article 8 of the ECHR encompasses a right to protection from serious climate-related harms.
A new case, filed in May 2025 by Poslední Generace (Last Generation) before the Prague Municipal Court (sitting in its administrative capacity) against the City of Prague, draws directly on this precedent. By targeting local administrative inaction, the case tests whether the EU Climate Law can impose binding obligations on municipalities, not just national governments. The post-KlimaSeniorinnen landscape makes it harder for Czech courts to dismiss such claims as purely political questions.
Political Issues
None of these legal developments take place without friction. Following the 2025 elections, the Czech Ministry of Environment has come under the leadership of the “Motorists” party. This party is a right-wing populist movement that has made opposing the EU Green Deal a cornerstone of its platform. Budget cuts, institutional reorganisation, and the removal of experienced environmental officials are already reshaping the ministry’s capacity to act. Experts warn that Czech nature and landscape face their gravest threat since independence.
This is precisely why litigation matters. When the political channel closes, the judicial one becomes more important. The Czech cases show that even in a hostile political environment, courts can be compelled to tackle the question: What do we owe to children who cannot yet vote, and to generations not yet born?
Conclusion
Czech climate litigation is still in its early stages. The 2022 breakthrough was overturned; the new cases are pending. But the direction of the legal developments is clear. Constitutional environmental rights are being stretched to accommodate climate obligations. The carbon budget framework is giving intergenerational justice a legal vocabulary. And children are becoming central figures in the argument for climate action.
Whether Czech courts will ultimately hold the line depends on a judicial culture that has already shown, at least once, that it can rise above political constraint. The world and future generations will be watching.
Bio
Marek Chuman is a student of International Justice at Leiden University College and a researcher at the Climate Litigation for Future Generations Research Clinic led by Otto Spijkers.