President Andrej Kiska (source: TASR)
“The President is acting in accordance with his declaration of 29 April 2015, when he described how he would proceed with the dismissal of judges who are more than 65-years-old,” Martin Lipták from the press department of the Presidential Office told the SITA newswire.
Kiska will continue to act in this way whenever the Judicial Council provides him with lists of judges aged over 65 years in line with the Constitution, according to Lipták.
Currently, the president can, but does not have to, dismiss judges who reach the age of 65. Further, the Judicial Council has to propose that the individual judge be retired, and there are no deadlines either for the Council to send their proposal or for the President to dismiss the judge.
Kiska has requested that MPs draft a constitutional change to the retirement rules for judges, setting the age when a judge has to retire from office, but Parliament has not found enough votes to pass the draft.
Speaker of Parliament Peter Pellegrini of Smer disregarded the request, with the argument that “the Constitution is the fundamental document of the state and therefore every amendment must be premeditated and discussed”, according to his spokeswoman Monika Hucáková in early November.
