Challenges to national defence in contemporary geopolitical situation

In 2021, the South Moravia region of the Czech Republic was dealing with the aftermath of tornado. This extraordinary event, which is not very frequent in the Czech Republic, was associated with the implementation of a considerable amount of efforts aimed at rescue, liquidation and subsequent recovery work. Using this emergency as an example, it can be stated that it is evident that climatic and meteorological conditions are changing significantly in connection with global climate change and are also affecting the territory of the Czech Republic. It is therefore very realistic to expect that the occurrence of emergencies associated with surprising and often difficult to predict emergencies will become more and more common, and it is therefore necessary to constantly prepare, not only at the level of public authorities, but also at the level of school facilities. The main body of the article focuses on the specification of proposals and measures that could be taken in any municipality affected by such or similar emergencies. Not only the proposals related to the implementation of recovery (technical) works, but also to the protection of the population, especially in the field of its education, have been elaborated in detail. Increasing the level of education and preparedness of the population can make a significant contribution to better managing the impact of emergencies of the same or similar nature.

The period in which countries around the world, including the Czech Republic, found themselves at the end of 2021 was characterized by a number of very significant political and security threats and risks. It was a period in which the next wave of the pandemic situation associated with the COVID-19 disease was manifesting itself. Even though the Czech Republic was already much better prepared for the problems associated with the outbreak of this disease, it could not be said that it was managing everything well, without problems and within the political consensus of all ruling and opposition parties. Based on results achieved in the elections to the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, which took place in October 2021, the priorities of the winning parties grouped into one government coalition were set. These priorities were presented in the form of a coalition agreement to the public. A paper deals with the anticipated intentions of the Government of the Czech Republic in its implementation for the 2021-2025 electoral period in the issues of safety and security in all aspects of their perception. Among the aspects examined were the areas of security policy implementation and the broader concept of population protection. In the paper, the terms “security” and “protection” are frequented in the number and form in which they appear in the text of the coalition agreement. The paper presents the occurrence of these terms in the documents that became the basic and initial documents for establishing mutual pre-election cooperation between political parties and movements. Last but not least, it also presents changes in the approach to these concepts in relation to coalition agreements concluded in 2013 and 2017. Other aspects of coalition agreements are deliberately not mentioned.

This article presents the rights of Prison Service officers regarding the preventive use of direct coercive measures. The concepts of the use and application of direct coercive measures were defined in relation to the Prison Service. The purposes of preventive use are presented with examples. The catalogue and basic principles of the use of direct coercive measures, which can be applied as preventive measures in the Polish Prison Service, are described. The above issues were adapted to the statutory protective tasks of this formation.

The military forces and means are used to fulfill humanitarian tasks of civil protection and to fulfill the tasks of the Police of the Czech Republic in serious situations endangering lives, health, property, or the environment. If the responsible administrative authorities, territorial self-governing bodies, fire protection authorities, or military rescue units are unable to provide rescue work or liquidate the consequences of a disaster on their own, the military is called. In addition to conventional defense tasks, it is therefore necessary to ensure the overall preparation of all components of the army for the performance of other tasks in cooperation with civilian authorities in their own territory. The paper focuses on the issues of civil-military cooperation, active advances and current capabilities of the Army of the Czech Republic in providing cooperation in rescue and liquidation work in the regions of the Czech Republic. The analysis of this issue identified the key aspects and for the subsequent determination of the evaluation criteria, the multi-criteria method was applied. The authors suggest certain procedures for updating the current situation that could be applicable in practice.

The article presents the current issues and latest trends of the legal and administrative aspects of ensuring public security in the field of state border protection. Firstly, the research reveals aspects of the public security threats in the sphere of national border security. Secondly, discusses the administrative legal regimes of the state border and frontier. Further discussion pertains to the functions and strategic goals of the State Border Guard Service, and the activity-related problems are elaborated. Finally, attention is devoted to one of the significant priorities, aiming at ensuring public security in this field – the EU external border control and protection. The authors applied general scientific methods of studying objective reality, peculiar to legal sciences: systematic document analysis, meta-analysis, structural-functional analysis, teleological, comparative, critical approach, generalisation and prediction. As a result in this research is emphasised the importance of decentralisation in ensuring public security at the level of the state territorial borders; the main guidelines of modernisation in this field are presented.