Integration of Compatriots Resettled to the Czech Republic
Resettlement of ethnic Czechs who permanently live outside the territory of the Czech Republic
- General Information
- History of resettlement of compatriots
- Regulations (governmental resolutions, laws)
History of resettlement of compatriots
The first stage took place in the years 1946 – 1947 under the management of the then Ministry of Labour and Social Care. At that time, tens of thousands of compatriots from Ukraine, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Hungary as well as from France, Austria and Germany resettled to Czechoslovakia. Most compatriots were resettled to border and Sudeten areas where a considerable number of farms had been vacated after the deportation of Germans.
The second stage took place in the years 1991 – 1993 under the management of the then Ministry for Economic Policy and Development. In this wave, the state relocated approximately 2,000 compatriots from Ukraine and Belarus within humanitarian evacuation from the areas that had been affected by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986. These compatriots were accommodated in several facilities, which largely consisted of reconstructed buildings left behind by the removed Soviet Army.
The third stage took place in the years 1995 – 2001 under the management of the Ministry of the Interior. At that time, compatriots resettled, with the help of the state, from Kazakhstan, Russia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Moldavia. Although this project was spread over the longest period of time, the lowest number of compatriots was resettled under this project. The reason is that this project was not a collective one but it was implemented on a strictly individual basis.
The fourth stage – “completion of resettlement” – took place in 2007 under the management of the Ministry of the Interior. Under this project, compatriots from Kazakhstan were resettled with the help of the state who had not taken advantage of this opportunity in the past for various reasons. This project was implemented solely with the resources of the Ministry of the Interior and it was a collective resettlement.
Under the programme, a total of 157 people representing 48 families filed applications for resettlement to the Czech Republic. These families can be included in 19 greater families consisting of separate families of parents, their children, siblings, etc., according to a kinship key.
The basic prerequisite for resettlement of the family was to prove the Czech origin of at least one of the spouses. With regard to the fact that one of the reasons for implementation of this programme was the effort to mitigate the consequences of division of families, which occurred after the end of the first wave of resettlement, the kinship ties to the compatriots resettled to the Czech Republic in the 1990s in the previous wave of resettlement from Kazakhstan were also taken into account.