The principle of promptness in the criminal proceedings

RÉSUMÉ IN ENGLISH The topic of this master thesis is the principle of promptness in the criminal proceedings because this question is nowadays the subject-matter of numerous discussions, in which it is spoken about overloaded Czech justice system, about delays in court proceedings and about options, how to relieve the system of Czech criminal justice system. The aim of the submitted thesis is to evaluate critically the current legal institutes helping to make the criminal proceedings faster, mainly the investigation of crimes, and to contemplate its potential extension, without having caused any more significant limitation of the right of the accused to defence. Among other principles, which stay often contrary to the principle of promptness and which the legislators always must bear in mind, are the principle of material truth and the principle of contradiction. The thesis is divided into seven basic chapters. The first chapter is the introduction. The second chapter deals with the meaning of promptness of criminal proceedings for each particular subject of the criminal proceedings, mainly for the accused and the injured party. Third chapter presents the statistic data on the average length of proceedings in the Czech Republic and within the European Union: the average length of criminal proceedings leaded..