BUSINESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS / Šturma, Mozetic (eds)

3. Approval by the government The working group made its last comments to the NAP in the late June (in person) and early July (by e-mail). After this, administrative staff of the Office of the Government finished the text itself, sending it to the approval by the minister. The approval was granted on August 10th. The process was somewhat hurried in the last phase, mostly for practical reasons. General election was planned for October, and the general idea, supported by most members of the working group, was that the NAP should be approved before it. General election means transfer of agenda from the leaving cabinet to the new one, which would cause inevitable delays. In August, the NAP was subject to the Commentary procedure (semi-mandatory procedure opening a material to comments from all state bodies before it can be approved by the cabinet). This took place until August 24th. Over the course of August and September, the comments and conflicts were resolved and settled. The final version of the NAP was sent to the Cabinet on October 3rd. Finally, the National Action Plan was approved by the government of the Czech Republic on 23 October 2017 (immediately after the election, but before the change of the cabinet). The Czech Republic thus became the 19th country to publish its NAP. 4. Contents of the Action Plan Although this text intends primarily to describe the creation of the NAP, it would be incomplete without at least short look at the contents of it. Before we look at the pillars of the NAP itself, a reader familiar with Czech government strategies and action plans would notice one particular feature – the introduction is much longer than usual in similar documents. Why is this so? During the preparation of the document, the drafters met a lot of misunderstanding, caused by the fact, that the topic is new – or rather this particular approach to the topic is new. The issue of business and human rights has been present for decades, but the Guiding Principles are less than 10 years old, and not widely known to public. Therefore, the NAP should not only address particular issues and set goals to the civil service, but also educate. To inform civil service, the business, and wider public, on what „business and human rights” is. Therefore, the NAP is much more descriptive and explanatory then an average government strategy document. As to the structure of the NAP, the first idea of the drafters was to copy the structure of the Guiding Principles. That is, 31 sub-chapters corresponding to 31 principles. But, as stated above, the Guiding Principles are meant to be general and are intended for the whole world, not all of them applying at the situation in the Czech Republic. Therefore, the original idea proved to be unrealistic. There are some Principles that would be basically empty in the Czech Republic (Rights of indigenous people or language minorities, business operation in war-torn areas), while in some other areas, the list of possible activities was much longer (state-owned enterprises, labour law, migrant workers…).

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