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Slovak President Zuzana Čaputová has brought a law back to the House of Representatives with which the governing coalition wants, among other things, to strengthen the personnel powers of the Cabinet at the expense of the head of state and expand the grounds for the dismissal of the heads of the Statistical Office and the Office for Supervision of the Health Insurance System (UDZS). The opposition welcomed Čaputová’s move. However, Prime Minister Robert Fico’s coalition government has enough votes in the House of Representatives to override the president’s veto.
Bratislava
3:06 p.m. January 2, 2024 Share on Facebook
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Zuzana Čaputová and Robert Fico | Photo: René Volfík, iROZHLAS.cz/Profimedia | Source: iROZHLAS collage
The President’s decision not to sign the amendment to the so-called Competence Law, which also includes changes to other laws, also means that a new Ministry of Tourism and Sports will not yet be established. At the same time, the head of state did not question its creation.
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In her decision, Čaputová explained that, according to a previous decision by the Slovak Constitutional Court, high-ranking state officials should be appointed and dismissed by the head of state and not by the government, as should be the case under the rejected law case with the heads of the Statistical Office and the ÚDZS. At the same time, the Slovak president criticized the expansion of the reasons for the dismissal of the presidents of both mentioned institutions.
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“Such a legal regulation essentially means that the government can dismiss the chairmen of these two bodies at any time, making them politically responsible to the government for the performance of their duties,” Čaputová explained. She added that such a change would be in direct contradiction to the idea of independence that the law grants to both offices.
Čaputová also criticized some other changes to the Competencies Act and the fact that the legislative package was passed in the Chamber of Deputies in an accelerated mode, although in her opinion there were no legal reasons for such a procedure.
The President’s veto was welcomed by the opposition parties, who warned against a weakening of the independence of the Statistical Office and the ÚDZS during the discussion of the bill in the House of Representatives. The heads of these two institutions took office at a time when the current governing parties were not yet in power.
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