How to Check Your Czech Business Partner

Why the registers matter more in the Czech Republic than at home

Czech law is built on the principle of formal and material publicity of the commercial register (§§ 3–9 of Act No. 304/2013 Coll., on Public Registers). In plain terms: what is registered is deemed known to everyone, and third parties may rely on it in good faith. This cuts both ways. You are protected when you rely on a registered fact — and you cannot later claim you did not know something that was published. Czech courts, banks and business partners therefore treat register checks not as diligence but as a baseline assumption.

For a foreign company, the good news is that the core Czech registers are online, free and searchable by anyone — no local presence, registration or Czech address is needed. The less good news: they are in Czech, several of them do not talk to each other, and the single most interesting one — beneficial ownership — was closed to the public at the end of 2025.

The commercial register: who the company is and who may sign

The starting point is the commercial register at or.justice.cz, maintained by the registry courts. For any Czech company it shows the registered name, identification number (IČO), registered office, legal form, registered capital, statutory body, shareholders (for an s.r.o.) and — critically — the way of representation (způsob jednání). A useful aggregated view of the same data, combined with other state registers, is available through ARES at ares.gov.cz, run by the Ministry of Finance.

The way of representation deserves more attention than foreign companies usually give it. Czech companies frequently require two directors acting jointly, or restrict certain persons to acting together with another. A contract signed by one director where two are required is not validly concluded on the company’s behalf — and because the restriction is published in the register, you will struggle to argue good faith. The same check applies to registered proxies (prokura) and to whether the person you are negotiating with appears in the register at all.

Two further details are worth 30 seconds each: whether the company is flagged as being in liquidation (v likvidaci — shown directly next to the name), and the date of incorporation. A company founded three months ago asking for 60-day payment terms on a large order is a different conversation than one trading since 2005.

Financial statements: the collection of documents nobody reads — and should

Every entry in the commercial register has an attached collection of documents (sbírka listin), freely accessible online through the same search. Czech accounting units are required to file their annual financial statements there (§ 21a of Act No. 563/1991 Coll., on Accounting). Small companies may file abbreviated statements without a profit and loss account, but a balance sheet must be there.

In practice, many Czech companies file late or not at all — and that fact is itself information. A counterparty that has published nothing for three years is either poorly managed or has something it prefers not to show; repeated failure to file can even lead the registry court to initiate the company’s dissolution.

Where statements are filed, even a non-accountant can extract the essentials in minutes: equity (negative equity is a serious warning), liabilities relative to assets, and trend over the last filed years. If the numbers matter to your decision, we review them together with the debtor’s payment and litigation history — filed statements are always at least a year old, and a clean balance sheet from last April says little about solvency this July.

The insolvency register: the check you repeat, not perform once

The insolvency register (ISIR) at isir.justice.cz is free, public and updated in real time. It shows whether insolvency proceedings have been opened against your partner, at what stage they are, and the complete court file including creditors’ filed claims.

For foreign creditors, ISIR is not just an information source — it is a legal mechanism. Publication in the register is deemed sufficient notice to everyone (no one will write to you), and once an insolvency decision is issued, creditors have only 2 months to file their claims (§ 136 of Act No. 182/2006 Coll., the Insolvency Act). Claims filed late are disregarded without exception (§ 173). This is why a one-off check at the start of a business relationship is not enough: the register must be monitored continuously for as long as your partner owes you anything.

ARROWS runs automated ISIR monitoring of clients’ Czech counterparties precisely so that the two-month clock never starts running unseen. The full mechanics of Czech insolvency from a creditor’s perspective are covered in our guide to Czech insolvency proceedings for foreign creditors.

Enforcement proceedings: the CZK 60 question

Whether court bailiffs are already enforcing debts against your partner is recorded in the Central Register of Enforcements (Centrální evidence exekucí, CEE), maintained by the Czech Chamber of Court Bailiffs under § 125 of Act No. 120/2001 Coll. (the Enforcement Code) and Decree No. 329/2008 Coll. It is available online at ceecr.cz; each basic extract costs CZK 60, and the detail of each individual enforcement another CZK 60.

Sixty crowns is the cheapest credit check you will ever run. An active enforcement means a creditor already holds an enforceable title against your partner and did not get paid voluntarily — and under Czech law, certain dispositions of a debtor’s property during enforcement are invalid, so buying assets from a company under exekuce carries its own risk.

Two limitations to keep in mind: the CEE does not include enforcement run by the tax authority, social security administration or health insurers, and records are deleted within roughly 15 days after an enforcement ends — it is a snapshot of current, not historical, distress. For how enforcement itself works, including the 2026 digitalisation changes, see our overview of the 2026 debt collection reforms.

VAT status: the register that can make you liable for someone else’s tax

The VAT payer register on the tax administration portal (adisreg.mfcr.cz) shows whether your partner is a registered VAT payer, which bank accounts it has published with the tax authority, and — most importantly — whether it is designated an unreliable VAT payer (nespolehlivý plátce, § 106a of Act No. 235/2004 Coll., on VAT). For cross-border checks, the EU-wide validity of a Czech VAT number can be verified through VIES.

This is not a reputational label; it has direct financial consequences for you. Under § 109 of the VAT Act, a customer who accepts a taxable supply from an unreliable payer guarantees the supplier’s unpaid VAT — the tax authority can collect it from you even though you already paid it in the price. The same guarantee arises if you pay to a bank account not published in the register (for payments exceeding CZK 540,000) or to an account held abroad for a domestic supply.

The practical rules for anyone buying from Czech suppliers: check the register before paying, pay only to published Czech accounts, and where a risk exists, Czech law allows you to pay the VAT portion directly to the supplier’s tax office instead (§ 109a) — a step that should be contractually agreed in advance.

Beneficial owners: what changed on 17 December 2025

Until the end of 2025, anyone could look up the beneficial owner of a Czech company online. That era is over. Following the Court of Justice of the EU’s ruling that unrestricted public access to beneficial ownership data disproportionately interferes with privacy rights, and decisions of the Czech Supreme Court and Supreme Administrative Court in 2025, the Ministry of Justice closed the public part of the register of beneficial owners on 17 December 2025.

The register at esm.justice.cz now serves only the registered entities themselves, public authorities, and obliged entities under the Czech AML Act (banks, notaries, attorneys, auditors) within the scope of their statutory duties; members of the public must demonstrate a legitimate interest to the court. An amendment approved by the government in June 2026 is expected to codify this restricted-access regime later in the year.

For a foreign company checking a Czech partner, this changes the workflow. Ownership can still be traced through public sources — the list of shareholders in the commercial register and its collection of documents, annual reports, and the registers of the parent’s home jurisdiction — but ultimate beneficial ownership behind layered or foreign structures is no longer a five-minute self-service check. Where knowing who really stands behind your counterparty matters — sanctions exposure, public procurement, larger transactions — this is now a task for professionals with lawful access to the data and the duty to verify it.

Real estate: does your partner actually own anything?

The Czech land register (katastr nemovitostí) can be browsed free of charge at nahlizenidokn.cuzk.cz, including ownership of specific properties. A full title deed (list vlastnictví) showing all encumbrances — mortgages, enforcement orders, insolvency notes — is issued for a fee through Czech POINT offices or the land registry’s remote access.

For credit decisions, the encumbrance section matters more than ownership itself: a partner whose only property is already mortgaged and carries enforcement notes offers little for a future creditor to enforce against. This is the same asset check we run before recommending litigation — a judgment against a debtor with nothing to seize is a piece of paper.

How ARROWS checks Czech counterparties for foreign clients

A register check answers the question “is there a visible problem today?” It does not answer “will this partner pay in six months?” Our counterparty screening combines the registers above with sources that are not self-service: court litigation history, the debtor’s conduct in past insolvencies, beneficial ownership verified within our statutory AML duties, connections to other entities of the same owners, and — for ongoing relationships — automated monitoring of the insolvency register so that the two-month claim deadline is never missed.

The output is not a data dump but a recommendation: contract as proposed, contract with security, or do not contract. ARROWS is a Czech law firm based in Prague, working in English with clients across Europe and beyond. Our lawyers support more than 150 joint-stock companies and 250 limited liability companies, the ARROWS International network built over the past decade operates in 90 countries, and the firm is insured for damages up to CZK 400 million. More than 2,000 clients trust us with their matters; in 2025, ARROWS was named Law Firm of the Year.

If you are about to sign with a Czech company — or already have doubts about one — write to consultation@arws.cz. Send the company name or IČO and a short description of the intended deal; we will tell you within days what the registers show, what they do not, and how to structure the contract accordingly. And if the relationship has already turned into an unpaid invoice, start with our complete guide to debt recovery in the Czech Republic.