Robert Fico, Denisa Sakova, Robert Kalinak and Peter Pellegrini in parliament. (source: Sme - Jozef Jakubco)
Welcome to your weekly commentary and overview of news from Slovakia. The coalition is about to deliver a blow to the whole prosecution system in Slovakia. The deadline for submitting candidacy applications for the presidential election has passed; 11 people are set to run. The government ponders buying Patriot air-defence systems, but wants a discount from the US.
If you have a suggestion on how to make this overview better, let me know at michaela.terenzani@spectator.sk.
MPs are about to pass the changes
The justice system in Slovakia is about to undergo drastic changes, ones which have prompted an ever-increasing number of people to take to the streets in protest, and led Brussels to express alarm.
Parliament is now set to pass the changes as early as this week after the coalition limited the opportunities for opposition MPs to speak. The whole process has taken longer than Robert Fico and his government originally anticipated.
They first submitted the amendment to the Penal Code on December 6 and intended to have the changes, including the scrapping of the Special Prosecutor’s Office, passed by Christmas and in effect by January 15. Thanks to a combination of opposition filibustering, street protests and some pressure from Brussels, the changes were delayed. But now the possibilities to delay the process seem to have been exhausted and the coalition is readying for a final vote on the reform.
If opposition MPs use up all the time they have been allocated, the parliamentary debate will last until Wednesday at the latest, meaning parliament might pass the changes on February 7. President Zuzana Čaputová, who has also opposed the changes and particularly the fast-tracked procedure being used to pass them, will then have 15 days to decide whether to sign or veto the bill. Assuming she vetoes it, which she has shown every sign of doing, parliament will need to vote on it again, which may take another few days. This means that the final vote on the law will likely take place before the end of the month. In its current form it would come into effect immediately.
The president and MPs can still appeal to the Constitutional Court, but even if the justices later decided to suspend it, the law would still become effective before that happened.
Last-minute amending proposals
Following the backlash that its attempts to pass the changes incurred, the coalition came up with a plan B – a set of changes introduced through an amending proposal submitted by Smer MP Tibor Gašpar, the former Police Corps president who himself faces organised crime charges within what is known as the Purgatory case. (Gašpar, along with his relative, oligarch Norbert Bödör, stand accused of attempting to corrupt the police force, among other things.)
These changes are also meant, observers say, to appease those EU institutions that might worry about the protection of the union’s financial interests, which would provide grounds for them to halt EU funds for Slovakia the way it has done for Viktor Orbán’s Hungary.
