BRATISLAVA, March 24, (WEBNOVINY) – MPs on Thursday failed to approve softer state citizenship legislation, forged by the opposition SMER-SD. Individuals that will acquire a foreign passport will have to waive their Slovak citizenship; otherwise they could be fined. Independent deputy Igor Matovic and Radoslav Prochazka of Christian Democrats voted for the blueprint, too.
Based on the failed revision, persons that studied, worked, conducted business, were top athletes, carried out charity or missionary activities in the given country for at least a year or whose close relatives came from the country the citizenship of which they acquire, would not lose the Slovak citizenship.
The amendment was to rectify the applicable wording pushed through in he era of Robert Fico. SMER-SD Deputy Chairman Dusan Caplovic stated that it is not a shame when a party corrects its own law when it features certain deficiencies.
Coalition deputies agree that foreign citizenship should be conditioned upon a link to the given country, but talks on the issue have reached a stalemate over the situation when the citizenship is granted without the required link to the country. The dual citizenship sparked a crisis in the coalition in the first parliamentary session this year. Particularly MOST-HID representatives were outraged by Radoslav Prochazka and Igor Matovic who supported draft tailored by SMER-SD.
The ongoing session also saw the failure of some other SMER-SD’s blueprints: the revision to the Income Tax Law meant to alleviate the negative impact of the applicable law on socially weak citizens and the revision to the Network Industries’ Regulation Act by Vladimir Faic, Lubomir Jahnatek and Peter Ziga that was to transpose the European Council and European Parliament directives, the so-called third energy package, into the Slovak law.
SITA