BRATISLAVA, February 28, (WEBNOVINY) – The coalition has not agreed upon a solution to dual citizenship and the issue will thus be put off for the time being. The coalition’s working group failed at its meeting on Monday to find a compromise between attitudes of independent MP Igor Matovic and MOST-HID. “I was pleased to watch the coalition getting closer to my standpoint. Of course, except for MOST-HID,” Matovic announced after the meeting. According to Culture Minister Daniel Krajcer (SaS), the only agreement achieved is that neither the Cabinet not the parliament will deal with the dual citizenship topic until the coalition arrives at consensus.
Radoslav Prochazka of KDH noted that attitudes of the working group’s members were slowly getting closer. The debate was fierce but businesslike and the involved talked about impacts of potential solutions. “Nonetheless, this cannot be the last debate about this topic,” he highlighted. It is not known when the common wording to the draft bill will be forged but it is unlikely to happen before the March session. “We do not speak of concrete dates,” chairman of the KDH deputy club Pavol Hrusovsky noted.
Representatives of the coalition quartet share the opinion that the adoption of foreign citizenship should be conditioned on a link to the given country but they tussle over the situation when foreign citizenship is granted without this link. Gabor Gal of MOST-HID maintains Slovakia should not punish its own citizens and take away their passports in such a case. However, Gal underscored that the failure of talks gives no reason for MOST-HID to obstruct the parliamentary session in March.
Prime Minister Iveta Radicova assumes that the best solution is a bilateral treaty with Hungary although Hungarian Foreign Minister Janos Martonyi expects Slovakia to adjust its own state citizenship law at first. Slovakia’s coalition however failed to push through its amendment to the state citizenship law, which was to fix the law adopted in the era of Robert Fico. Under it, Slovak citizens, who obtain a passport of another country, will lose their Slovak citizenship. Fico’s “anti-law” was adopted in response to Hungary’s dual citizenship, which deprives of Slovak citizenship anyone who decides to accept citizenship of another country. However, when the parliament dealt with it earlier in February, it failed to go through, which triggered a crisis in the coalition. Particularly MOST-HID representatives were outraged by Prochazka and Matovic who voted for the proposal submitted by the opposition SMER-SD.
SITA