History, development, presence and future of cooperative banking in the Czech Republic and former Czechoslovakia

89 SUMMARY The introductory chapter of this honours thesis concerns the financial institution of a credit union as such. The term credit union is explained, attention is also paid to the substance, significance, and purpose of credit unions, and the basic principles of their functioning are analysed. The next chapter explores the history and tradition of cooperative banking in the lands today known as the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. It describes the beginnings of cooperative banking in the 19th century, analyses in detail the development of cooperative banking in the second half of the 19th century and early 20th century, and attention is also paid to the time after the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918, the era between the Wars, and the time from the end of the Second World War to 1989. The next, third, chapter, analyses the development of the Czechoslovak and Czech legal regulation of cooperative banking in our territory until 1989, and attention is paid to each major legal norm regulating the field. The following chapter is devoted to the development of cooperative banking in the Czech Republic after 1989, and to the present legal regulation of credit unions, focusing primarily on Act No. 87/1995 Coll., On Savings and Credit Cooperatives. This chapter analyses in detail the..