Two different restrictions that sound alike
When a client tells me there is "some sort of burden" on their plot, it takes opening the documents to find out what it is. Either a protection zone (ochranné pásmo) or an easement (vecné bremeno). Both take away part of what you may build, both survive a change of owner, and both can turn an attractive plot into an unbuildable one. That is where the similarity ends.
A protection zone is a restriction of public law. It arises directly from a sector statute (energy, water, roads, forests) or from an administrative decision, and applies regardless of who owns the land or whether they know about it. Nobody has to tell you, it is not entered in the cadastre, and the seller need not mention it in the listing. It exists because a line, a road, a forest or a monument exists and needs protecting.
An easement, by contrast, is an institution of private law under the Civil Code: a specific right of a specific beneficiary against a specific property. It arises from a contract, from inheritance, from a court or authority decision, or by prescription, and is registered in the cadastre of real estate. Unlike a protection zone, you can see it in black and white. The distinction is not academic: it decides where to look for the restriction, whom to negotiate with, and whether it can be removed at all.
| Feature | Protection zone | Easement |
|---|---|---|
| Legal basis | Public law: a sector statute or an authority's decision | Private law: the Civil Code |
| Where it is recorded | Usually not in the cadastre: in the land-use plan, operators' maps and decisions | Part C of the list vlastníctva, the encumbrances section |
| How it arises | Automatically, from the existence of a line, road, forest or monument | By contract, inheritance, decision or prescription |
| Whose interest it serves | The public interest, the network operator, the state | A named person or the owner of the benefited plot |
| Whom you deal with | The utility operator, the municipality, a state authority | The beneficiary, a notary, the cadastre, a court |
| How it can be changed | Operator's consent or exception, relocation of the line | Registered agreement to extinguish, buy-out, loss of purpose |
| Survives a sale | Yes, it attaches to the land itself | Yes if it is in rem, no if it is a personal easement |
Where each one can actually be found
The list vlastníctva (land registry extract) is reliable on easements and blind to protection zones. Part C, the encumbrances, is the one place an easement shows up: if nothing is written there and the parcel carries no pending-entry flag, the easement most probably does not exist. Protection zones work the opposite way: an empty Part C says nothing about them, because they are never entered in the cadastre.
The picture of the protection zones is assembled from three sources. The first is the územnoplánovacia informácia, the zoning information the municipality issues for a specific parcel. The second is the municipal land-use plan and its drawing of territorial limits, mapping line corridors, flood areas, protected natural areas and heritage areas. The third, and in practice the most important, is the set of written statements from the operators of the utility networks, each with their assets drawn onto the cadastral map.
None of the three is complete on its own: the land-use plan shows the situation as of the day it was drafted, the municipality does not know other operators' routes to the centimetre, and each operator answers only for its own network. So the statements are requested from all at once: electricity, gas, water, sewerage, telecoms, public lighting and, depending on the location, district heating.
The zones a family-house buyer actually meets
The table sets out the restrictions that come up most often around a family house, with the statute behind each. Treat the figures as the statutory starting point, not the answer for your plot: the width follows from the voltage, the pipe diameter or the road class, and binds only in the operator's own statement.
| Source of the restriction | Statute | What the extent depends on |
|---|---|---|
| Overhead power line | Act No. 251/2012 Coll. on energy, § 43 | Voltage and conductor type: at 1 to 35 kV, 10 m from the outermost bare conductor (less if insulated), 15 m up to 110 kV, 20 m up to 220 kV, 25 m up to 400 kV, 35 m above 400 kV |
| Underground power line | Act No. 251/2012 Coll., § 43 | 1 m from the outermost cable at voltages up to and including 110 kV, 3 m above 110 kV |
| Gas pipeline | Act No. 251/2012 Coll., § 79 and § 80 | Nominal diameter and pressure, measured from the pipeline axis: 1 m for gas distributed inside a municipality's built-up area below 0.4 MPa, otherwise 4 m up to DN 200, 8 m for DN 201 to 500, 12 m for DN 501 to 700, 50 m above DN 700. A pressure-driven safety zone is added on top |
| Public water main and sewer | Act No. 442/2002 Coll., § 19 | Pipe diameter: 1.5 m from the outer edge of the pipe up to 500 mm inclusive, 2.5 m above 500 mm |
| Roads and motorways | The Roads Act and Decree No. 35/1984 Coll., § 15 | Road class outside built-up areas: 100 m from the carriageway axis for motorways, 50 m for class I, 25 m for class II, 20 m for class III, 15 m for class I and II local roads |
| Railway | Act No. 513/2009 Coll. on railways, § 5 | For a railway line, 60 m from the axis of the outermost track, but at least 30 m from the outer boundary of the railway perimeter |
| Forest | Act No. 326/2005 Coll. on forests, § 10 | Land within 50 m of the boundary of a forest parcel. Building is conditional on a binding opinion from the state forest authority |
| Watercourses | Act No. 364/2004 Coll. on waters | Riparian land along the watercourse, width depending on the significance of the stream. The river basin administrator confirms the extent, and a flood area may be layered on top |
| Airports | Act No. 143/1998 Coll. on civil aviation | No fixed statutory width: set by a decision of the Transport Authority, they mainly restrict building height |
| Heritage | Act No. 49/2002 Coll. on the protection of the heritage fund | Arises from a decision of the regional monuments board; extent and conditions are individual |
| Cemeteries | Act No. 131/2010 Coll. on burial services | Width and conditions are set by the municipality in a generally binding ordinance, so they must be requested from the municipality |
With gas, the first question is which kind of pipeline it is. A family house connects to a distribution main inside the village, and for a pipeline distributing gas within a municipality's built-up area at an operating pressure below 0.4 MPa, § 79 sets the protection zone at just 1 m from the axis. The wider bands in the table belong to pipelines of larger diameters. Alongside it there is also a safety zone under § 80, wider at higher pressures, and next to a high-pressure pipeline it is that zone which decides the buildability of the land.
The operator's statement is the practical instrument, not a formality
You can see an overhead line from the car. A cable or a pipe under the grass you cannot, and that is the classic nasty surprise: the plot looks clean until the operator's drawing shows a sewer main or a distribution cable running through the middle of it, and with it a strip where you may neither build nor plant mature trees. That statement is the one document a designer and the building office will later rely on, so it is requested in writing, for a specific parcel number, with the assets drawn on a map.
The drawing has limits too: it is issued with a tolerance, older lines were often surveyed imprecisely, and connections to neighbouring houses are sometimes missing from the records. Before any excavation the lines must be staked out on site. When the building line and a utility route meet on a narrow parcel, one metre of difference decides whether the house shifts or is redrawn.
Easements in practice: the four types I see most often
- A right of way and passage. The classic case of a parcel with no access of its own from a public road. For the neighbour it is the only way home, for you a strip of yard you may neither build on nor permanently fence off.
- An easement in favour of a utility operator. A registered right to lay, operate and repair a line on your land and to bring equipment onto it. It often arose when the network was built, or when a connection was laid for a neighbour.
- A lifetime right of residence and use. Typically created when a house is transferred to the children. It is tied to a person and ends with them, but until then it binds the new owner too and can block a remodelling.
- A right to place a structure or part of one. A roof overhang, retaining wall, staircase or service connection reaching onto the neighbouring plot.
The key phrase is in rem. An easement attached to the property passes not with a person but with the land: when you buy the parcel you take it on automatically, even if the purchase contract does not mention it. A personal easement (in personam) is tied to the beneficiary and ends with them. So in Part C you read not only what right is registered, but in whose favour: a named person, or the owner of a numbered parcel.
What you can actually do about a restriction
Neither a zone nor an easement automatically ends the project. There are four ways out, differing in both cost and likelihood of success.
- Relocating the line. Technically the cleanest solution: the line moves to the edge of the plot and the zone moves with it. Whoever triggers it pays, meaning you, and at higher voltages or pressures the sum can exceed the price difference between two plots.
- Written consent or an exception from the operator. The rules allow activity inside a protection zone with the operator's consent, usually subject to conditions: a protective duct, a concrete channel, a minimum cover depth, a ban on permanent structures above the route. Consent is not an entitlement, and no budget should rest on it until you have it on paper.
- Redrawing the house. The cheapest option and, for a family house, the most common. The zone is given over to the driveway, parking, paving or garden, and the mass of the house moves. This is why it pays to test the massing on the plot before buying, together with the building coverage ratio.
- Extinguishing the easement. Handled by a written agreement between the beneficiary and the burdened owner, registered in the cadastre, usually for a payment. It can also lapse when its purpose falls away, for example when the neighbouring parcel gains access from a new road. The court route takes years.
A heritage protection zone and the zone around a listed monument are a case of their own. There the negotiation is not about relocation or exceptions but about the form of the building, and the counterpart is the regional monuments board.
Check before the deposit, not after it
Zoning information and operators' statements can be obtained within a few weeks and cost a fraction of the price of the plot. A reservation deposit is paid within days of the viewing. That is the whole difference between due diligence that costs you nothing and due diligence that costs you the deposit.
In summary
The two restrictions solve different problems and are found in different places. The easement sits in Part C of the land registry extract and takes ten minutes to find. The zone lives only in the operators' statements, the land-use plan and the authorities' decisions, which is precisely why people discover it late, usually once the plot is paid for. The rest of the due diligence is covered in How to choose a plot.