The Czech Ministry of the Interior violated the rights of the Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) movement when it included it in the Report on Extremism for 2022. The district court for Prague 7 decided on Friday.
- The District Court for Prague Seven recognized the violation of SPD’s right to a good name.
- At the same time, the court did not grant the movement the right to an apology from the Ministry of the Interior.
- The Ministry of the Interior did not present evidence that xenophobic statements dominated the activities of the SPD.
- Statements by individuals with ties to the SPD cannot be automatically attributed to the movement as a whole.
- The SPD has repeatedly contested inclusion in the extremism reports, with mixed results.
The district court thus granted the SPD’s claim against the Ministry of the Interior. “There is a violation of the right to protect the plaintiff’s reputation by the fact that he was unjustifiably mentioned in the document Report on extremism and hatred based on prejudice in the territory of the Czech Republic in 2022,” Judge Eliška Candra Soukupová ruled.
The court rejected the apology
In addition to acknowledging that his rights were violated, the movement also demanded an apology from the department. However, the court did not accept the ministry’s apology to the movement.
Both parties reserved a deadline for filing an appeal. The judgment is not final. It is possible to appeal against it at the Municipal Court in Prague.
The report on extremism linked the movement to a “xenophobic populist scene”, which the Home Office failed to properly prove. The Ministry of the Interior did not present any evidence to show that xenophobic statements were the main content of its activities during the period covered by the report.
The judge’s response to the report
“The court believes that the report can be considered an official procedure. If it is incorrect and damage has been caused, the state is responsible for it,” explained Soukupová.
The report also recalls that several persons with ties to the SPD were convicted in the monitored period. Among them was the former deputy of the movement, Miloslav Rozner, who questioned the genocide when he described the Roma concentration camp in the village of Lety as a “non-existent concentration camp”. The Municipal Court of Appeal in Prague upheld a six-month suspended sentence for these statements.
However, according to the court’s decision, it is not possible to apply the statements of a few individuals to the whole movement, especially considering that they have been distanced from them.
Previous Disputes
One judgment has already been handed down in this matter. In June 2025, the District Court for Prague 7 recognized that it had not been proven that xenophobic expressions were the main component of the SPD’s activities. According to the judgment, the Ministry of the Interior violated the rights of the movement, but it was not an intensive enough intervention to demand an apology.
However, this judgment was canceled in November 2025 by the Municipal Court of Appeal in Prague. According to him, it was opaque and contained a number of procedural errors. According to him, the district court, for example, did not provide the ministry with sufficient space to present evidence. The judgment was annulled and the trial thus returned to the beginning at the District Court for Prague 7.
It is not the first time that the SPD movement has resisted inclusion in the report on extremism. The lawsuit also protested the reports for 2020 and 2023. While the movement was successful in the first case, the second lawsuit was rejected by the court. The SPD appeared again in the report on extremism for 2024, writes Novinky.cz.
