THE RULING coalition's New Citizen's Alliance (ANO) assisted opposition party Smer in pushing through parliament on July 4 a bill on retail chains, which formalises relations between suppliers and retail chain outlets.
According to coalition parties, the law was originally designed to regulate the construction of new hypermarkets, but numerous amendments have extracted the legislation's teeth.
The revision does not contain a regulation on a compulsory minimum share of Slovak products offered by supermarkets and hypermarkets as Smer had originally proposed.
The parliament adopted a similar law last year but the European Commission heavily criticized it and President Rudolf Schuster vetoed it.