Czech Republic Unitary state

History and evolutions

The Czech Republic is a parliamentary Republic. Its Constitution was adopted on 16 December 1992.

The present-day Czech Republic stands on the former territory of Bohemia. An ethnically homogeneous country with a long tradition of urbanisation, its economy consists primarily of crop farming (cereals, sugar beet), extractive industries (mainly coal), and processing industries (engineering, chemicals, glass-making and food processing) – mostly in the big cities (Prague, Ostrava, Brno and Pilsen).

The Czech Republic is situated in Central Europe and covers two large regions – Bohemia and Moravia – plus a small part of Silesia.

The Kingdom of Bohemia was formed in the 10th to 13th centuries

In the 16th to 17th centuries, Bohemia and Moravia were under Habsburg rule but supported the Lutheran and Calvinist Reformation and were dragged into the Thirty Years’ War (1619-1649). The fervent and often brutal Catholic Counter-Reformation saw the Czech territories subjected to forced Germanisation.

Following the outbreak of World War I, the country’s political parties remained officially loyal to the Austro-Hungarian Empire but made preparations for the empire’s collapse. The Czechs joined forces with the Slovaks in May 1918 and Czechoslovakia was declared as an independent state on 28 October.

The Czech Republic, which covers the historical regions of Bohemia, Moravia and part of Silesia, came into existence on 1 January 1969 following the creation of a federal Czechoslovakia. It became an independent state on 1 January 1993 following the dissolution of the federal state of Czechoslovakia – the country’s last form of government.

It joined NATO on 12 March 1999 and became an EU Member State on 1 May 2004.

The country is divided into 14 regions (kraje). The smallest region is Karlovy Vary, with a population of 305,000, while the biggest, with a population of 1,283,000, is Ostrava.

The former districts were officially abolished as local authorities on 1 January 2003, during phase two of the country’s local government reforms. Some of their powers were transferred to the regions, while others were devolved to the municipalities, which gained more extensive powers.

Despite this, the districts still exist as the basic local subdivision for courts, devolved central government services, police districts and, in some cases, other public institutions.

They also serve as a statistical unit. In addition, until 1 January 2008, they corresponded to NUTS level 4 – a level that has since been abolished in the Czech Republic.