The Czech Constitutional Court has ruled that the Magistrát of Prague (City Council) can apply its own gambling laws that reflect local conditions and allow individual city districts to ban or restrict live gambling independently. The decision supports municipal district autonomy, highlighting the differences between the Czech government’s centralised approach to land-based gambling venues. In 2021, Prague introduced a ‘city ordinance’ banning all technical games (slot machines) across the city, while allowing live dealer games like roulette and poker to continue in casinos. Each district was allowed to restrict or ban live gambling. The 57 districts of Prague took different approaches: 41 districts banned live games altogether, while others imposed time restrictions on gambling venues.

In 2023, the Ministry of the Interior, together with the Czech Competition Authority, deemed the rules inapplicable and discriminatory to gambling licence holders and asked the City Council to scrap the rules. The ordinance was temporarily suspended by the Ministry, which said the rules breached national regulatory standards. Now the Constitutional Court has lifted the suspension, backing local lawmakers. Justice Pavel Šámal said the Constitutional Court recognises the right of city districts to determine their own regulatory methods as legitimate and rational. The Ministry of the Interior argued Prague should have uniform gambling rules across its entire economic territory, blaming the city for creating market distortion.

The Office for the Protection of Competition (ÚOHS) had previously found the fragmented regulatory framework might breach competition laws and launched an investigation. Prague officials said their approach complied with Czech law, which allows municipalities to develop gambling policies tailored to local needs. The City of Prague presented valid reasons for differentiating between gambling operators, which the Court accepted as reasonable and non-discriminatory. The Court found the established restrictions met the requirements to achieve regulatory objectives. But not everyone agreed. Justice Milan Hulmák dissented in a written opinion, questioning Prague’s live gambling regulation map. “I see no logical or objective reasons on Prague’s live gambling regulation map that could justify the complete regulatory divergence between different city regions,” he wrote. Gambling has been a contentious issue in the Czech Republic for a long time. The Gambling Act (amended in 2016) gives municipalities the right to create their own restrictive ordinances for gambling activities and to choose which games to ban or allow.

But The Czech Interior Ministry suspended the article saying it hinders competition and affects both central control of gambling and economic performance (tax revenue) of gambling licences. The Prague City Council sees the decision of the Court as an approval of its practice of addressing problematic gambling through neighborhood-specific regulation by asserting that “standard regulations neglect the unique nature of each locality, as certain districts experience aggravated problems with regard to gambling dependence and criminal activity. The Court held that it was reasonable to divide the city into districts for regulatory reasons, stating that the method was not arbitrary, and that each district’s rules had a rationale that was “ordinary and necessary”.

In the view of the Czech Competition Authority, the decision will pose regulatory challenges to the gambling industry. Companies across various districts will have to contend with a patchwork of rules, producing complicated and expensive compliance issues. Numerous licence holders are currently reassessing their premises. The decision not only grants Prague’s districts more power, but may also give the green light for other towns to challenge the cabinet and adopt separate ordinances in the Republic’s 14 provinces.