Under the Charter the home is inviolable, and the Criminal Code protects it with a section that covers surprisingly ordinary situations: the ex-partner who "just came for their things", the landlord who walked in unannounced, the tenant who refuses to leave after notice. The difference between a civil dispute and a crime lies in authorisation.
What is prosecuted
- Unlawful entry into another person's home: a house, a flat, and also a fenced plot belonging to it.
- Unlawful staying: you entered lawfully, but after being asked to leave you stay.
- Violence, overcoming an obstacle, a weapon, several people raise the range: from the basic two years up to five.
Where it gets contested
Who is "authorised": a flatmate with keys, a spouse after a break-up, a tenant after the tenancy has ended. Here the courts are deciding civil law in the middle of criminal proceedings, and the outcomes vary. In one recent case the regional court acquitted the accused and the Supreme Court reviewed it again on the public prosecutor's extraordinary appeal. These are cases where the defence often rests on the tenancy agreement, not on the interview.
What this rests on
No advice on this page is an opinion. Each one has a section of the law and a court decision behind it. Click through, the full text is on Europaius.
Statute
- § 178 tr. zákoníkuviolation of the inviolability of the home: unlawful entry or staying, up to two years; more with violence, a weapon or in a group
Case law
- 7 Tdo 537/2024 (Nejvyšší soud, 17. 7. 2024)the appellate court acquitted the accused of violating the inviolability of the home; the Supreme Court reviewed the case on an extraordinary appeal
- 6 Tdo 79/2025 (Nejvyšší soud, 30. 7. 2025)the Supreme Public Prosecutor argued that the basic, not the aggravated, form of the offence was met; a dispute over legal classification
- III. ÚS 2733/24 (Ústavní soud, 10. 6. 2025)acquittal on the charge of violating the inviolability of the home while the compensation order was upheld
A different situation?
- You or someone close to you has been detained
- Pre-trial detention is looming, or someone is already in it
- A police summons has arrived
- Criminal complaint: you want to file one, or one has been filed against you
- You have been charged with a criminal offence
- A penal order has arrived
- Alcohol or drugs behind the wheel, driving ban
- Plea agreement, conditional discontinuation
- House search
- You have become the victim of a crime
- European arrest warrant, extradition abroad
- Charged with embezzlement
- Disorderly conduct: a brawl, a pub, the street
- Dangerous threats and stalking
- You drove while banned from driving
- Charged with bodily harm
- Damage to property
- Defamation
- Conditional release from prison
- Negligent homicide: a fatal accident
- Credit fraud and subsidy fraud