The Freedom and Solidarity party (SaS), a member of the governing coalition, said that it has no substantial problem with an amending proposal to the State Citizenship Act presented on January 24 by four SaS MPs grouped in its 'Ordinary People’ faction, led by Igor Matovič, that enables people to acquire another country’s citizenship without giving up their Slovak citizenship, the TASR newswire reported.
"In terms of content we see no problem, we'll talk about this with Igor Matovič at our caucus session," TASR was told by SaS caucus chairman Jozef Kollár. According to the coalition proposal, people who request citizenship of another state should not automatically lose their Slovak citizenship – as stated in the statutes that Slovakia adopted in response to Hungary's dual citizenship legislation. The amendment to Slovakia’s statutes was passed by the former Robert Fico-led government in 2010.
Ordinary People's amending proposal introduces another wrinkle to the issue as it only allows people who have permanent residence in another country, who study there, work, do business or have strong family bonds to gain that country’s citizenship. TASR wrote that in effect this means that people lacking such a link to Hungary would still lose their Slovak citizenship by acquiring Hungarian citizenship.
The Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) stated that it is not clear whether this is just Matovič's initiative or that of SaS. The caucus chairman of Most-Híd, László Solymos, said that Matovič should realise before submitting his proposal and not supporting the proposal made by the governing coalition that his stance could easily translate into no amendment being passed by parliament.
Source: TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
