Is it legal to record a meeting in Czechia?

§ 182 of the Trestní zákoník, Porušení tajemství dopravovaných zpráv, holds both limbs in one section. § 182(1) is the capture limb, covering a closed letter in transit, a "datové, textové, hlasové, zvukové či obrazové zprávy posílané prostřednictvím sítě elektronických komunikací a přiřaditelné k identifikovanému účastníku nebo uživateli, který zprávu přijímá", and a non-public transmission of data to, from or within a computer system. § 182(2) is the reveal-or-use limb for those same messages.

§ 183 is a different offence with a different subject matter: Porušení tajemství listin a jiných dokumentů uchovávaných v soukromí, the secrecy of a writing, photograph, film, record or other document kept in another person's privacy. It is about documents and stored records, not about messages in transit. Summaries that describe § 183 as the disclosure counterpart of § 182 have it wrong, and our own research made that mistake before rereading the text.

Neither reaches a participant. An in-person conversation is not a dopravovaná zpráva at all, and a participant on a call is an identified recipient to whom the message is directed. The real criminal exposure in Czechia is use and disclosure: § 182(2) for a message not intended for you, or § 183 for someone else's privately kept record.

Alongside both sits § 180, unauthorised handling of personal data. We located the heading but did not read the body.

Yes for a work meeting, and this is the distinctive Czech feature. The operative provision is Civil Code § 86, not § 84: § 84 is about podoba, likeness, which is visual, while § 86 is the audio one. It provides that nobody may interfere with another's privacy without a legal ground, and in particular may not without consent intrude on their private spaces, observe their soukromý život or make an audio or visual record of it, use such records, or disseminate them.

Private life is the hinge. The Nejvyšší soud, in its decision of 11 May 2005, sp. zn. 30 Cdo 64/2004, held that "hovory fyzických osob, ke kterým dochází při výkonu povolání, při obchodní či jiné veřejné činnosti, zpravidla nemají charakter projevů osobní povahy": conversations occurring in the exercise of a profession or in business or other public activity generally do not have the character of manifestations of a personal nature, so evidence by an audio recording of such a conversation is not inadmissible in civil proceedings.

Two sourcing caveats. The Supreme Court's own decision database could not be queried, so that passage is quoted from the Constitutional Court's verbatim citation of it, which is an official source quoting it rather than the decision itself. And it is a 2005 decision under the 1964 Civil Code; while § 86 of the 2012 Code uses the analogous soukromý život, no post-2014 decision confirming the carry-over was opened.

And the endorsement of covert recording is narrow. Ústavní soud II. ÚS 1774/14 of 9 December 2014 says both things clearly. Against covert recording: "Za běžných okolností je svévolné nahrávání soukromých rozhovorů bez vědomí jejich účastníků hrubým zásahem do jejich soukromí." And for admissibility in a narrow class: differently to be assessed are cases where the secret recording is part of a crime victim's defence, or a way for a markedly weaker party in a significant civil and especially employment dispute to obtain legal protection, which it likens to acting in necessity or permitted self-help. That is not a general licence.

§ 88(1) is the licence that the case law actually runs on: consent is not needed where the record is made or used "k výkonu nebo ochraně jiných práv nebo právem chráněných zájmů jiných osob", for the exercise or protection of other rights or legally protected interests. § 90 caps every ground: it may not be used in a disproportionate way contrary to a person's legitimate interests.

Consent is the safe route where the conversation is personal rather than professional, and asking costs a sentence in either case. Note § 87: someone who consented may withdraw the consent even if it was given for a fixed period, which is worth knowing before you rely on an agreement given once.

Než začneme: tuhle schůzku si nahrávám, abych si z ní potom udělal zápis. Nahrávání běží jen na mém počítači, přepis je lokální, nikam se nic neposílá a samotný zvuk se neukládá, zůstává jen text v souboru, který mám u sebe. Používám to výhradně pro vlastní zápisky. Je to tak pro všechny v pořádku? Kdyby někdo nechtěl, řekněte to teď a vypnu to.

Masculine speaker; a female speaker says udělala. In English: Quick note before we start: I'm recording this so I can write my notes up afterwards. It transcribes on my laptop, nothing goes to the cloud, and I only keep the text. Say so now if you'd rather I didn't.

GDPR applies as well, and the analysis is the ordinary European one: a meeting recording is personal data about every identifiable speaker, a transcript without speaker labels is still personal data, the household exemption is read narrowly and a work meeting has a direct connection to a professional activity, you need a lawful basis, and Art. 13 wants the information at the time the data are obtained, which for an always-on recorder means before the substance of the meeting. The European framework covers all of that once rather than on every country page.

Zákoník práce § 316(2): the employer may not, without a serious reason consisting in the special nature of the employer's activity, intrude on the employee's privacy at the workplace and in the employer's common areas by subjecting them to open or covert surveillance, interception and recording of their telephone calls, email checks or letter checks. § 316(3): where such a serious reason does exist, the employer must directly inform employees of the scope of the checking and how it is carried out.

Two points of precision. The prohibition is tied to the employee's privacy at the workplace and in the employer's common areas, and the listed measures are telephone calls, email and letters. Recording a meeting is not on that list verbatim, which is an argument either way. And the "serious reason based on the special nature of the employer's activity" threshold is, like Spain's Art. 89.3, not obviously satisfied by wanting better meeting notes.

Nothing we can cite. ÚOOÚ's landing page resolves, but nothing specific on meeting recording was opened in our research, and we would rather name the gap than paraphrase.

Because the binding layer in Czechia is data protection rather than criminal law, this is where the product's architecture does real work. Transcription runs on your own device, the audio is never written to disk, and nothing is sent anywhere. There is no cloud component, so on our reading we are not a processor under Art. 4(8), which processes personal data on behalf of a controller and presupposes receiving it. That means no Art. 28 data processing agreement to sign with us, no sub-processor list, no international transfer and no transfer impact assessment, because there is no transfer. We found no decision squarely holding that an on-device-only vendor is not a processor, so that is reasoning you can check rather than a settled point.

What it does not do is disclose anything. There is no bot in the participant list and no banner on anyone else's screen, so the transparency obligation rests entirely on you saying something. Earkeep does not make anyone compliant and could not: a tool cannot be compliant, only a processing operation can be lawful.

Where it helps in the room is that stopping is real and checkable. A pause from the live edge releases the microphone and the system audio stream, so your operating system's own recording indicator goes dark in front of the person who asked. A meeting on a connected calendar can be marked never-record. And a stretch of the day, or a saved meeting with its transcript, can be purged from the file on your own disk, with no server copy anywhere to reconcile against.

• Trestní zákoník 40/2009 (§§ 182, 183)
• Civil Code 89/2012 (§§ 81 to 90)
• Ústavní soud II. ÚS 1774/14 (9 December 2014)
• Zákoník práce 262/2006 (§ 316)
• ÚOOÚ
• GDPR, EUR-Lex

• European recording laws: the four layers, the controller question, and all 32 countries.
• Telling people you're recording: the scripts, and the three ways to stop.
• Private by design: why the audio never leaves your computer.

This page is legal information, not legal advice. It summarises provisions and guidance rather than replacing them, and we are not lawyers. If the answer matters, ask someone who can be held to their answer.