CYIL vol. 9 (2018)

CYIL 9 ȍ2018Ȏ CZECHOSLOVAKIA: CERTIFICATES AND PASSPORTS OF REFUGEES statute. 91 The mingled legislation was mainly dualistic . Reich regulations were legally effective for Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, while in Slovakia the valid Hungarian Passport Act took precedence. Subsequently,GovernmentRegulationno. 215/1921Coll. concerning transitional police-law provisions on passports, retained the general passport duty. Government decree no. 207/1923 Coll. allowed exceptions from this general principal. According to Article II of Government Regulation no. 264/1925 Coll., dated 22 December 1925, the validity of both passport regulations was extended until the end of 1927. The bill reacted not only to the outcomes of the international passport conferences, but also to the recommendations contained in international arrangements regarding Russian and Armenian refugees. Section 4 of the draft meticulously governed exceptions to the general passport duty. The general rule was that passports were issued to Czechoslovak nationals. According to the draft, political authorities of the second degree also had the power to issue passports for practical reasons to persons without nationality or persons whose jurisdiction could not be ascertained. The second exception was the issuance of temporary passports to non-nationals who did not have or lost their travel documents, or if their country of origin did not have a diplomatic or consular representation in Czechoslovakia. The draft contained the well settled legal term “passport”, even though the Third General Conference on Communications and Transit recommended, in 1927, to use a unique and different label for the document. The wording of section 5 of the Act corresponded with this recommendation. 92 The legislature used a periphrastic legal term of “certificates in the form of passports” ( průkazy na způsob cestovních pasů ). Both legal terms had a distinct meaning role and function in the intrinsic context of the passport statute. In accordance with section 7 of the Passport Act, Czechoslovak nationals were entitled to have a passport. 93 This right was not quite as complete or absolute as was the case under the Hungarian Statutory Art. VI of 1903, where every national was entirely entitled to having a passport issued. The right of a national to seek a passport and the state’s duty to issue one was thought to be correlative. Issuance of a travel document was not even based entirely on the administrative discretion of the competent authority. Czechoslovak nationals were bearers of the right to a passport in the form of a legal claim unless grounds of safety, financial, or economic character opposed. According to the authoritative interpretation offered by the circular of the Ministry of Interior, a stateless person or a refugee was not entitled to have a certificate issued in the form of a passport. 94 They had no legal claim to these temporary certificates. Of course, a refugee, who did not belong to any state, should not be subjected to arbitrary decision-making. That was because the political authority disposed administrative discretion. Beyond doubt, its appreciation was governed by both the statutory rules and general principles of law. The statute set up a national passport regime to meet the legal requirement of coherence and completeness. The statutory instrument coincided with the standards of the international 91 See the reasoning. Senate of the National Assembly of the Czechoslovak Republic, year 1927, II election term, 5th meeting, Print (tisk) 535. 92 Act no. 55/1928 Coll., 29 March 1928, on passports. 93 The Passport Act; implementation instructions. (Zákon o cestovních pasech; prováděcí pokyny). Circular of the Ministry of Interior no. 19624/1928-5. Official gazette of the Ministry of Interior of the Czechoslovak Republic , Praha, Rolnické tiskárny, 1928, ročník X, p. 142. 94 Ibidem , p. 133.

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