Slovak Finance Minister Ivan Mikloš said, according to information acquired by the Sme daily, that if parliament restricts his powers on dealing with European mechanisms designed to secure financial reserves to assist member states, he would consider it a show of mistrust and he could simply resign. Sme wrote that Mikloš said this on June 23 at a meeting of coalition parliamentary caucuses and since then additional speculation has surfaced that Mikloš might resign, Sme wrote on June 28.
Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party, a member of the four-party ruling coalition, is apparently at the forefront of the efforts to curb the finance minister’s powers in reaching an agreement on a loan to Greece from the EFSF or its successor, the ESM – as SaS has proposed such a measure in parliament.
“I can confirm this statement of the Finance Minister and I consider it proper,” Prime Minister Iveta Radičová told the public broadcaster STV on June 26 when asked whether it was true that Mikloš threatened resignation.
Radičová’s spokesman Rado Baťo later explained that she commented on his statement that he would understand the limiting of his powers by parliament as a demonstration of lack of trust and not on any threat to resign. The Finance Minister’s spokesman, Martin Jaroš, denied that Mikloš would consider resigning.
The head of the SaS parliamentary caucus, Jozef Kollár, said on June 27 that his party was collecting signatures to have Mikloš stripped of part of his powers but failed to specify how many signatures it had already collected.
The OKS faction of Most-Híd would provide only three signatures, its chairman Peter Zajac told Sme, saying that its MP Ondrej Dostál refused to add his signature as he was totally against any help to Greece. Kollár added he was sure SaS would have the 30 required signatures by June 28 even though the party has only 21 MPs.
Source: Sme
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
