NEW legislation regulating public elections will be discussed by parliament as early as at its next session in March, Interior Minister Robert Kaliňák said during a discussion programme broadcast by the Slovak Radio February 8. The bill was drafted in the summer of 2013.
Because the opposition disagreed with the early version, Kaliňák began seeking a consensus in talks with opposition parliamentary parties.
“We began with six parties, now there are 10 of them; the opposition is growing via division,” said Kaliňák. He hopes that the new law, bringing into harmony election rules within elections themselves as well as pre-election campaigns, will be passed in March.
Slovakia has received criticism for its inability to adopt the new legislation even as it fails to fulfil recommendations from the Group of States Against Corruption (GRECO) regarding the transparency of political funding.
The GRECO meeting in October noted these shortfalls when the third such report on how Slovakia fulfils GRECO recommendations was on the agenda. The new GRECO deadline for rectifying the situation is July 31 of this year. Originally the new election code should have been effective as of 2013.
