PRAGUE, Feb. 18 (Xinhua) -- The Constitutional Court of the Czech Republic rejected proposals by President Milos Zeman and a group of deputies to delete part of the national law on conflict of interest, the court announced on Tuesday.
Objections to parts of the law are "unfounded", said the court, citing that the law only requires possible candidates to resolve conflict of interest concerns before an election or appointment.
"It is the duty of a democratic rule of law not only to create conditions for a public official to exercise his function properly, but also to prevent him from using the power entrusted to promote his own (personal) interests to the detriment of the public interest and thus public confidence," the court said in a press release.
The amended law, so-called "Lex Babis", took effect in 2017. It puts limits on control of companies by members of government and bans government members from operating radio, television broadcasting and publish periodicals.
Prime Minister Andrej Babis claims that the law unfairly targets him. To meet the amended law, Babis, who was then finance minister at the time, placed his Agrofert, a giant chemical, agricultural, food and media holding, and also his SynBiol company, into trust funds in February 2017.
Later, proposals to abolish a series of the law's controversial provisions were separately filed with the court by Zeman and a group of deputies. In his proposal addressed to the court in 2017, President Zeman criticized the law for excluding certain people from political office.
A month after the president's proposal, a group of deputies criticized the law for violating the property rights of government members.
