Anotace:
Czechia has experienced a mortality decline in recent decades. To assess the position of Czechia in an international context and estimate possible future development, we defined a model population representing European mortality potential. This paper aims to briefly describe the principle of the model’s construction and its practical application to the population projection published by the Czech Statistical Office in 2023. We defined the European mortality potential for each calendar year as Europe's lowest achievable age-specific mortality rates. To apply this approach to the CZSO’s population projection, we constructed the European mortality potential for the years 1980–2019. We compared the age-specific mortality rates in Czechia in the same period to the potential in the form of excess mortality indexes. We were able to use these indexes to evaluate mortality development in Czechia and to construct the mortality component of the projection. Czechia lags behind the European mortality potential mainly at the ages 40–60 for men and 60–80 for women.