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In civil law countries, such as continental European countries, does constitutional law usually prevent the country parliament from passing a law that declares a person guilty of a crime and inflicts punishment on the person, which would be called a 'bill of attainder' in United States law?

If yes, how is such a safeguard worded and how does it apply? I tried looking into the Czech bill of rights but couldn't find a specific paragraph which would prevent the parliament from passing such law.

I would be interested in an example of such clause in the constitution of any European civil law country.

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The Czech constitution incorporates the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms by reference. Article 40, paragraph 1 says:

Only a court shall decide on guilt and on the penalty for criminal offenses.

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    FWIW, in general, in European countries, rights that are protected by the Bill of Rights in U.S. law are frequently protected by a treaty (often a multinational one) in addition or instead of being protected in their constitution. In part, historically, this was because these countries often didn't have entrenched constitutions when these rights started to be protected, and the treaty provided some process that had to be followed to exit the treaty, unlike domestic legislation which could have been more easily amended. Commented Mar 22, 2025 at 21:52
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    ... Specifically, for almost every European country, that's the European Convention on Human Rights. It's mandatory for EU member states and those that wish to join the EU. Commented Mar 24, 2025 at 8:29
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    Also notice Article 1 (of the same domestic Charter) which makes Article 40 unrepealable. And Article 9 par. 2 of the Czech constitution which might be construed to make the separation of powers, at least as a general principle, unrepealable. Of course, a revolution or a military catastrophe can uproot any constitution as a whole; and constitutional courts can even be slowly "neutralized", so no entrenchment mechanism is ever absolute. Commented Mar 24, 2025 at 22:36
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Article 103 of the Grundgesetz requires a legal basis for punishments and prohibits ex post facto laws.

Article 101 requires the use of lawfully appointed judges.

Article 19 prohibits laws which restrict constitutionally protected rights for individual cases only.
Any such restriction must be general rather than for individual cases.

A bill of attainder would violate all these.

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    A bill of attaineder, used as intended, is not an ex post facto law; but yes requiring lawfully appointed judges precludes any bill of attainder. Commented Mar 24, 2025 at 17:51
  • Article 101 only requires that court cases are judged by lawfully appointed judges, it does not by itself prevent guilt to be determined by the legislature instead of by the judiciary. For that, I would rather point to Article 92, which states that "The judicial power shall be vested in the judges". If we assume that this is intended as an exhaustive list of people with judiciary power then that should preclude the legislature from determining guilt via a bill of attainder. Commented Mar 25, 2025 at 17:01
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Article 5 of Bulgarian constitution is pretty much explicit in this regard:

(3) Никой не може да бъде осъден за действие или бездействие, което не е било обявено от закона за престъпление към момента на извършването му.

my translation:

(3) No one can be convicted for an action or inaction which was not declared a crime by law at the time it was committed

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    What if the Parliament of the country passes a law that says "From now on, being [insert name here] is a crime"? No ex post facto law, they just made it illegal for a particular person to exist. Commented Mar 24, 2025 at 12:26
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    Other texts thereof close the obvious loopholes. E.g. article 6 prevents "From now on, being [insert name here] is a crime". Commented Mar 24, 2025 at 22:51

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