BRATISLAVA, September 26, (WEBNOVINY) — A junior member of the ruling coalition, the party MOST-HID rushed to react to the amendment to the controversial State Citizenship Act from the era of Robert Fico, sent to parliament earlier on Monday by two lawmakers for SDKU and KDH. Gabor Gal of MOST-HID says that the draft is not a solution to the situation but only a facelift while Slovak citizens will continue losing their citizenship against their will if they gain citizenship of an other country.
The draft of Pavol Hrusovsky (KDH) and Jozef Mikus of SDKU offers a solution to the situation when a citizen of Slovakia automatically loses his/her Slovak citizenship after being granted another country’s citizenship based on his free will. The draft limits the loss of Slovak citizenship through becoming a citizen of another country to cases when the other state’s citizenship was acquired by an applicant without any registered form of residence in the respective country. The authors of the proposal want to enable persons who gained another country’s citizenship during their stay in this country and were consequently stripped of Slovak citizenship because of this reason in the period from July 17, 2010 until December 31,2011 to regain Slovak citizenship.
MOST-HID sees the only possible solution in restoring the state before the controversial legislation was adopted by the Fico government, which does not enable people to have citizenship of two countries if the second one was accepted based on an expression of will. The norm was adopted in reaction to the Hungarian act that enables the acquisition of Hungarian citizenship even to people that do not have permanent residence and have never lived in Hungary. It is enough if they have Hungarian ancestors. The ruling coalition pledged to fix the situation through a deputy initiative but it failed to agree on the issue, thus leaving the controversial law in effect for now. Nevertheless, a group of ruling coalition deputies have contested it at the Constitutional Court earlier this month.
The leader of the Ordinary People faction and independent MP Igor Matovic opines that there will be nothing to vote about since submitters of the draft failed to observe the six-month period for submitting a revision to the law in question that was delivered to parliament on Friday, September 23. According to him, the problem is that the compulsory six-month period from the date of the latest submission of an amendment to the same law lapsed only on Saturday, September 24. Matovic underscored that when he was submitting an amendment to the law in April, the coalition feared that it might go through and recollected the existence of the parliamentary rules of procedure that speaks about a six-month period and based on it, they did not put the amendment on the parliamentary agenda. Speaker of Parliament Richard Sulik even turned to the Parliamentary Constitutional Committee to approve his decision. When the law is valid, it must apply in the same way to Matovic as well as Hrusovsky, the Ordinary People leader said.
Matovic says that the content of the Hrusovsky-Mikus proposal is absurd since currently it is very easy to get any registered residence in Hungary. He said that in April the coalition wanted to allow [Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor] Orban to hand out Hungarian citizenship in Slovakia but we prevented this scenario. „Now the coalition comes up with a quasi better solution, he continued requiring a real tie to other country. However he is disappointed that the only condition is any form of residence, which is the same perversity,“ according to Matovic. He says that if Orban figures out how naive Slovaks want to simplify his appropriation of hundreds of thousands of Slovak citizens, he will formally grant temporary residence to each Slovak Hungarian together with a citizenship application. As Orban acutely needs Slovak Hungarians in the next elections, Matovic would not wonder if he stages a theatrical granting of interim residence right at his home address.
Mikus said that the draft is the result of what they were able to agree on. According to him it is the proposal of his party, KDH, and the SaS while it was sent to parliament and the SDKU-KDH initiative. The draft however is almost identical with the one from SMER-SD from the beginning of the year. The opposition party however set also the condition that the stay in other country has to last at last six months. Mikus did not comment on it and rather voiced hope at all deputies of the aforementioned coalition parties will vote for the revision.
Opposition SMER- SD is willing to support the amendment drafted by Hrusovsky and Mikus on the condition they will specify more precisely the term „form of registered residence.“ SMER-SD Deputy Chairman Marek Madaric said that if the proposed form of registered residence meets the standard criterion for permanent residence or direct family ties, he sees no reason why the party’s MPs should not support the revision. If the submitters do not manage to specify the given term, the strongest opposition party will either submit an amending proposal or initiate a discussion on the issue. A general form of residence should not be enacted in the law as, Madaric says that this term can mask in form of short-term residence „We have always said that substance is at stake for us with the state citizenship law,“ stated Madaric in explaining why his party is willing to support the coalition proposal on the condition that the form of registered residence is clearly specified.
SITA