The opposition Hungarian Coalition Party (SMK) has announced the results of a legal analysis addressing the situation surrounding Slovakia’s controversial new Press Code which it had asked independent experts to produce. The analysis found four alternatives, the SITA newswire wrote. SMK leader Pál Csáky said that the first possibility was to file a motion with the Constitutional Court. The SMK is ready to support such a step, but the party needs the support of five or six deputies from other opposition parties. The second option would be to submit a draft amendment to the Press Code at a parliamentary session in September that would correct the disputed provisions. The SMK is in favour of this solution, and the party has already more or less agreed on its implementation. Csáky does not consider the remaining two possibilities to be very realistic. The SMK could turn to the ombudsman, who has the right to submit the problem to the Constitutional Court, or present the problem to international forums, for example the European Court for Human Rights.
The SMK invited its opposition partners, the SDKÚ-DS and the KDH, to meet it, but their representatives declined the invitation. The opposition fell out in April after the SMK broke ranks and voted in favour of the EU Lisbon Treaty, which had represented the opposition's only opportunity for parliamentary leverage to block the Press Code. Csáky did not want to comment on the fact that the other parties did not come, but he hopes that they will re-evaluate their stance soon. He thinks that for now, the SMK is the strongest and the most active member of the opposition in Slovakia. SITA
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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