In the building of the former county house on Main Square in Rimavská Sobota, southern Slovakia, the town hall, tourist information centre, registry office, and local art gallery are located. (source: TASR)
Parents in Slovakia will not face obstacles when applying for a birth certificate for their child, in which they insist on the name being recorded in the form as it appears on the birth certificate issued by another EU country.
Public Defender of Rights Róbert Dobrovodský announced that the Government Council for Human Rights, Ethnic Minorities and Gender Equality supported his draft resolution concerning the right to respect for private and family life in mid-June.
Dobrovodský drafted the document after handling a case in which an international couple’s request was declined by a Slovak registry office.
“I examined a complaint in which the petitioner objected to the special registry office refusing to issue a Slovak birth certificate for a child born to a Slovak woman and a foreigner in Spain, because the parents requested that the child’s first name and surname be recorded in the combined form as it appears on the Spanish birth certificate,” said Dobrovodský.
He noted that the Court of Justice of the European Union dealt with a similar case in the past. Based on the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU, the court ruled that EU member states cannot refuse to recognise the child’s surname as registered in another member state where the child was born and has resided since then.
The Slovak registry office has already fixed the problem caused to the couple, according to Dobrovodský.
The public defender of rights also praised the Foreign Ministry and the Interior Ministry for their initiative to extend this rule to birth certificates issued outside the European Union as well.
“Thus, the new procedures will apply not only to birth certificates issued within the EU.”
