On 4 November 2026 the Czech Chamber of Deputies passed the Digital Economy Act by 142 votes to one, according to Expats.cz. The bill gives the Czech Telecommunications Office (ČTÚ) and the Office for Personal Data Protection supervisory powers over online platforms. It now goes to the Senate. The margin looks like a mandate for a new regime, but the Act mostly closes a compliance gap that has been open for more than two years.
The case for moving fast
The strongest argument for the bill is that a regulation without national enforcers does not work. The Digital Services Act (DSA) is directly applicable, but it relies on each member state to designate a Digital Services Coordinator, give it real powers, and set penalties for breaches. Without those, the largest platforms are supervised by the Commission, while smaller marketplaces, hosting services and local platforms face no meaningful oversight at home. Users who want to report illegal content, or challenge a wrongful removal, then have no national body to turn to.
Czechia has been in that position for some time. According to the Commission's Digital Services Coordinators page, the Commission sent letters of formal notice to Czechia and five other states on 24 April 2024. It issued reasoned opinions to Czechia, Cyprus and Portugal on 3 October 2024, and it referred Czechia, Cyprus, Poland, Portugal and Spain to the Court of Justice on 7 May 2025. Euronews reported that the reasoned opinions gave the three countries two months to act. The Commission's referral announcement said these states had failed to give their coordinators the necessary powers and to lay down penalty rules. Expats.cz, citing Czech Radio, notes that the vote comes while Czechia still faces proceedings at the EU's Court of Justice.
The bill itself was introduced to the Chamber on 12 December 2025 as parliamentary print 69, per Digital Policy Alert. So the legislative process took roughly 11 months in the Chamber alone, after the formal-notice letter. Passing the Act is the right call, and the sooner the better. Infringement litigation is a poor way to run a digital single market.
What the bill does
Based on Expats.cz's account, the Act sets up national oversight of social media, marketplaces, search engines and cloud services. Its main provisions are:
- Platforms must offer ways to report illegal content.
- Platforms must take "appropriate measures to protect minors," including limits on profiling-based targeted advertising when they know with reasonable certainty that a user is underage.
- Marketplaces must act on illegal products and be more transparent about sellers.
- Inspectors may enter residential premises with court authorization.
- The Czech Agriculture and Food Inspection Authority may require platforms to remove or restrict listings of certain dangerous products.
- During election campaigns, ČTÚ must prioritise complaints from candidates whose posts were removed.
Most of this restates DSA duties rather than adding to them. That is the correct design. National law should designate authorities, define procedure and set penalties. It should not create a second layer of substantive content duties that platforms in the other 26 member states do not face.
Where the risks sit
Three provisions deserve scrutiny in the Senate.
First, the split between two supervisors. ČTÚ is a telecoms regulator and the data protection office is a privacy authority. Neither has much experience with speech. The Czech Agriculture and Food Inspection Authority is a third body with the power to order listings restricted. Fragmented powers raise the risk that platforms get inconsistent instructions. They will also tend to over-remove content to avoid a dispute with any one of the three. Over-removal is the typical failure mode of notice-based regimes, and it falls hardest on lawful speech and small sellers who cannot afford to appeal.
Second, the minors provision. The reported test, "reasonable certainty" that a user is underage, is a sensible limit because it avoids mandating universal age checks. But the wording will determine whether platforms are pushed toward intrusive identity verification. The Senate should keep the standard tied to what a platform already knows, and avoid language that creates a duty to find out.
Third, the election-period rule. Giving candidates faster complaint handling is understandable, because a wrongly removed campaign post can do real damage in a short window. But a priority lane for one class of speakers also needs a safeguard in the other direction. Supervisors should apply the same standard to every complaint, and the reported requirement that they weigh freedom of expression and the right to information should be kept in the final text. I could not verify penalty amounts from the coverage available, so the Senate and observers should watch the fine ceilings. They should be proportionate and in line with the DSA's own limits.
What to watch
The Senate can approve the bill, return it with amendments, or reject it. Approval without amendment is the fastest path to ending the infringement case, and returning it would mean another round in the Chamber. That argues against reopening the text unless a provision is clearly defective. The better place to apply pressure is the implementation phase. ČTÚ should publish its complaint-handling criteria, report how many takedown orders it issues and how many are reversed, and coordinate with the data protection office so platforms get one set of instructions.
Czechia's near-unanimous vote shows broad political agreement that platforms should be accountable. The task now is to make sure the national layer is proportionate: it should deliver the oversight the DSA promised without handing three agencies loosely bounded discretion over what Czechs can say or sell online.