Constitutional Act on the Czechoslovak Federation

For nearly all of its existence as an independent nation, Czechoslovakia had been a unitary state, the lone exception being the "Czecho-Slovakia era" immediately before World War II.

The Czechoslovak state was declared to be a federation of "two equal fraternal nations," the Czech Socialist Republic and the Slovak Socialist Republic, each with a national administration paralleling and, at least in theory, equal in status to the federal government.

Together with a provision (Article 42) that certain decisions required the majority consent of each half (Czech and Slovak) of the Chamber of the Nations and a provision (Article 41) that constitutional amendments, organic laws, the election of the president and declarations of war required a three-fifths supermajority not only in the Chamber of the People but also of each half (Czech and Slovak) of the Chamber of the Nations, this institutional reform was designed to end Slovak fear of Czech domination of the legislative branch of the government.

In May 1975, the 1968 Constitutional Law of the Federation was further amended to allow Gustáv Husák to take over the presidency from the ailing Ludvík Svoboda.

That declaration and its conflict with the constitutional system of Czechoslovakia persuaded most Czech and Slovak politicians that negotiations about the dissolution had become unavoidable.