We would like to inform you about legislative changes related to the coronavirus epidemic, which have been discussed in the Parliament of the Czech Republic.

At the meeting of the Chamber of Deputies, following legislative changes were approved:

Lease of business premises

• At the relevant period (i.e. from 12^th of March 2020 to 30^th of June 2020), the lessor cannot unilaterally terminate the lease contract on the grounds that the lessee is in delay with the payment of the rent (this does not apply to service charges) if such delay occurs at the relevant time, alternatively due to coronavirus-related restrictions.
• The lessee is obliged to pay the rent according to the previous point in the so-called protective period (i.e. until the 31^st of December 2020). If the lessee fails to fulfil this obligation in the protective period, the lessor may terminate the lease contract with a notice period of 5 days.
• In case of termination of the lease contract during the protective period, the lessee is obliged to pay the overdue rent within 30 days from the termination of the lease contract.

Moratorium on repayments of loans and mortgages

• Possibility of postponement of repayment of loans and mortgages for natural persons and legal persons on the basis of an individual application, namely for a period of 3 or 6 months, according to the applicant’s choice.
• The application for postponement of repayments must be notified in writing or by other means specified by the lender, where the applicant must state the negative economic impact of the COVID-19 epidemic as a reason for his application. The reason of the application will not be subject matter of a review. The lender shall subsequently without undue delay confirm the receipt of his application and shall inform the applicant within 30 days of such notification about the amount, number and frequency of payments to be made by the applicant after an end of the postponement period and about the total amount thereof.
• The postponement of repayments is free of charge.
• This regulation applies to loans concluded before 26^th of March 2020, excluding some exceptions (e.g. loans secured by real estates).
• For natural persons, the repayment of the principal sum as well as the interest are postponed (however the interest still increases during the moratorium), for legal persons, only the repayments of the principal sum might be postponed, legal persons are obliged to pay the interest during the moratorium.
• The possibility of postponement does not apply on: revolving credits, factoring, operating leasing and credit card loans.

Last but not least, at today’s Senate’s meeting, the support for self-employed persons in the amount of up to CZK 25,000 for the relevant period (i.e. from 12^th of March 2020 to 30^th of April 2020) has been approved. At this meeting, the Minister of Finance also stated, that immediately after approval of the support, the Financial Administration will start accepting the applications.

In case of any questions, please don´t hesitate to contact us at any time.