A Rollercoaster Ride of Czech Credit Unions

The aim of this paper is to assess the current situation of Czech credit unions in context of their past development, changing environment and legislative framework evolution. We focus on the differences between traditional cornerstones of cooperative banking and operating principles of Czech credit unions. We compare contemporary credit unions’ performance with performance of their predecessors together with performance of commercial banks. We conclude that despite the crisis of 1999, Czech credit unions still behave like small and risky commercial banks what contradicts to business models of the credit cooperatives operating in the EU.