Data-center law in Czechia

Zakon c. 283/2021 Sb., stavebni zakon, Sec. 1

Effective 2024-01-01 · Applies to both

The Building Act unified Czechia's territorial-planning law and building code in one statute, replacing the separate framework of the prior 2006 Building Act.

Part Three (Sections 38 to 136a) sets the territorial-planning tools, including the master plan and zoning decisions a large industrial or technical project such as a data centre must fit within, administered by municipal and regional territorial-planning authorities; Part Six (Sections 171 to 266) sets the building-permit procedure itself, administered by the building authorities, under which a builder needs a permit before constructing, and later a final inspection approval before use, a facility of a data centre's scale.

The Act's stated purpose is an integrated protection of public interests across territorial planning, building authorization and construction.

Source: Full text of law

Zakon c. 100/2001 Sb., o posuzovani vlivu na zivotni prostredi, priloha c. 1, bod 106

Applies to both

Item 106 of Annex 1 lists construction of a storage complex with a total built-up area from 10,000 square metres as a Category II undertaking, screened by the regional authority rather than automatically subject to full assessment.

Source: Full text of law

Zakon c. 458/2000 Sb., energeticky zakon, Sec. 50 odst. 4

Applies to both

Under a connection agreement, the transmission-system or distribution-system operator undertakes to connect the applicant's generation, storage, distribution or consumption equipment to the transmission or distribution system and to secure the agreed reserved capacity or output at the point of connection, and the applicant undertakes to pay a lump sum toward the operator's connection costs; a data centre applying for a large new electricity connection goes through this same general regime as any other large consumer.

The connection agreement must be in writing and state the technical connection conditions, the metering equipment's location, the connection date, the point of connection, and the reserved capacity at the delivery point. Unless the parties agree otherwise, the outer statutory deadline for connecting to the distribution system is five years at high and very-high voltage and three years at low voltage from a complete connection application.

Source: Full text of law

Zakon c. 72/2000 Sb., o investicnich pobidkach, Sec. 1a and Sec. 1c

Applies to private

An investment incentive may be granted for an investment project realized in a strategic services centre, which the Act allows to take the form of a data centre focused on the storage, sorting and management of data, alongside a software-development centre, a repair centre for technically advanced equipment, or a shared-services centre; a project starting, expanding the capacity of, or extending the output of such a centre with new services qualifies on the same terms as one in manufacturing or in a technology centre.

The incentive can take the form of corporate income-tax relief, a discounted transfer of land including related infrastructure, material support for creating new jobs, material support for staff retraining or training, material support for acquiring long-term tangible and intangible assets for a strategic investment project, or a real-estate tax exemption in a government-approved favoured industrial zone.

Which of these forms the Ministry of Industry and Trade may actually offer for a data-centre project, and the qualifying investment and job-creation thresholds, are set by government regulation the Ministry issues based on an analysis of the country's economic and industrial development, rather than being fixed in the Act's own text.

Source: Full text of law