On Monday, the government decided that the Prime Minister will decide on priorities in the arrangement of air transport for senior government officials, repealing a more than 25-year-old resolution which states that flights by the president and the heads of the houses of parliament cannot be restricted.
Martin Vodicka, director of communications at the Government Office, told CTK that the change will enable faster and more flexible decision-making in the event of a crisis.
Amid ongoing repatriation flights from the Middle East last week, Senate Speaker Milos Vystrcil (ODS) was criticised by the government coalition for flying to Italy to support Czech Paralympians. He said at the time that the flight had been pre-arranged, and that he had consulted the Defence Ministry the day before with no objections.
Vodicka said the existing resolution needed to be revised because it did not take crisis situations into account.
“In order to avoid situations where a flight needs to be dispatched quickly and it is not possible to wait a week for the next cabinet meeting, flights will now be approved by the prime minister. The current repatriation operation has confirmed that such an arrangement is necessary,” he said.
For the same reason, a clause stating that flights for elected officials are unrestricted has been removed, as there may be situations where some flights will take priority over those of politicians, Vodicka added.
According to the updated rules of air transport for elected officials, the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, the Speaker of the Senate, and the President will continue to be provided with air transport free of charge in connection with the performance of their duties.
Air transport for elected officials is provided by the Ministry of Defence.
