By EUDO CITIZENSHIP expert Dagmar Kusa
In June 2010, just a few weeks before leaving office, the Slovak government hastily reacted to the new Hungarian law on citizenship, which made access of ethnic Hungarians to dual citizenship easier in the neighbouring countries. The departing first cabinet of Robert Fico amended the Slovak Act on Citizenship by withdrawing Slovak citizenship from those Slovaks who willingly acquired the citizenship of another country. Both action and reaction were arguably fueled by populist nationalism rather than by ideas about tolerant multicultural citizenship or any evolutionary trends in citizenship legislation within the EU in the past years (see also the EUDO CITIZENSHIP forum debate on this controversy).
The Slovak 2010 amendment met with strong opposition immediately since its adoption. A group of opposition members of parliament filed a case at the Constitutional Court in September 2011 claiming that the amendment violated art. 5 of the 1992 Constitution which stipulates that no one can be deprived of their citizenship against their will. Although the case was finally heard three years after its submission, its constitutional status remains uncertain. The Court did not, in the end, discuss the claimants’ objections. The Court rejected instead the case on formal grounds – as the minimum number of judges in the Constitutional Court required to pass a decision for or against the claim of the case (at least seven voices for or against a motion) was not present when the decision was made. Therefore, we will not know whether the objections were valid or not and whether the Act is indeed unconstitutional. The court has decided by its non-decision, and that decision is final.
As the 2010 Amendment was less than ideal in virtually everyone’s view, including that of its authors’, there were several attempts to amend the Act on Citizenship since. None of them has, however, gained sufficient support in the National Council of the Slovak Republic.
Minister of Interior R. Kaliňák, who was also a member of the first Fico cabinet which passed the 2010 Amendment, stated after a recent government meeting that the government has a new amendment ready for parliamentary readings and that he “hopes that it will enable restoration of citizenship to those who were not the intended target of the Act (the 2010 Amendment), since the Act was a reaction to those legal norms of states that readily hand out citizenship. Such laws are always dangerous.”
The 2010 amendment resulted in 892 cases of loss of citizenship between 17 July 2010 (when the amendment entered into force) and September 2014, out of which only 55 cases (or 6%) were due to the acquisition of Hungarian citizenship (those who were presumably the target of the amendment hinted at by Minister Kaliňák). Most people lost their Slovak citizenship due to the acquisition of Czech (333), German (178), or Austrian citizenship (124).
Gábor Gál, the legal representative of the opposition group of the Members of Parliament whose case was rejected at the Constitutional Court claims that they are considering filing a case with the European Court for Human Rights. Meanwhile, Slovak citizens face no alternative but to wait. Again.