The Judicial Council, Slovakia independent judicial oversight body, has agreed to allow judges to vote on new members to the council. The body’s chair, Supreme Court president Štefan Harabin, had been expected to block the vote, following his disagreement with changes made to the voting procedure by the previous government, but at end of a two-day meeting in Dudince, the members of the council agreed that the vote would take place next week, the Sme daily reported.
“We worked on the assumption that the council cannot become dysfunctional,” said one of the council’s members, Jozef Vozár, as quoted by Sme. He was referring to the fact that several of the council members’ terms are about to expire.
The tenure of eight of the council’s 18 members will expire in June. Moreover, the tenure of three members elected by parliament has already expired and they are unlikely to be replaced by new nominees since the speaker of parliament, Pavol Paška, has postponed a vote on this pending a final ruling by the Constitutional Court on the validity of the changes.
If the council had agreed with Harabin’s proposal to postpone a vote, only the three nominees of the president, Dušan Čimo – elected by parliament before the postponement – and Harabin himself would have remained, Sme wrote.
Source: Sme
For more information about this story please see: Judicial Council elections could be postponed
Compiled by Radka Minarechová from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
