By
The current Czech Parliament arose from its predecessor established after 1968 when reforms towards federalization were undertaken in former Czechoslovakia. The Chamber of Deputies, the lower chamber of the Czech Parliament, has existed since 1993. In 1996, senators of the upper chamber gathered for the first time. Institutionally speaking, the emergence of the Czech Parliament was much more complex since the members of the Chamber of Deputies in the first electoral period (1993 onwards) had been elected in the general elections in 1992. The 1992 general elections were held to elect members of the Czech National Council – a state-level parliament of the Czech Republic, which was a part of the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, a predecessor of the current Czech Republic – and members of the Federal Assembly. With the split of the former federation, only the state-level deputies retained their mandates. The Czech parliament therefore started as an “unimportant” state-level chamber of second-order deputies because many party leaders were present in the Federal Assembly which was seen to be much more important.