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Talks on State Citizenship Act Amendment Continue, No Agreement Yet
Wednesday 13 Octtber 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, October 13 (TASR) - The talks held by Coalition representatives on an amendment to the State Citizenship Act continued on Wednesday with considerable progress being reported by Foreign Affairs Minister Mikulas Dzurinda (SDKU-DS).
The first round of talks took place already on Monday (October 11). "We're close to reaching an agreement, but I wouldn't like to go into specifics," Dzurinda said.
According to Interior Minister Daniel Lipsic (Christian Democratic Movement/KDH), the aim is to get the amendment ready to be submitted at November's session of Parliament.
The amendment is expected to calm the situation between Slovakia and Hungary and civilise Slovakia's legislation, said Dzurinda. "What we're doing is we're correcting the reaction of Slovakia [to the Hungary's Dual Citizenship Act - ed. note]. However, it was only a bad reaction to a bad action," he claimed. "We don't have the power to directly change the Hungarian law, but that's where the source of the problem is – the bad action."
Dzurinda said that there are still some details about the amendment that still need to be discussed. But, as always, "the devil's in the detail".
On May 26 this year, the Slovak Parliament (under Robert Fico's Government) passed an amendment to the State Citizenship Act - drafted in response to controversial Hungarian legislation designed to facilitate Hungarian nationals in neighbouring countries to gain dual-citizenship. Based on the amendment, Slovak citizens will lose their citizenship in two cases - if they willingly decide to give it up or if they apply for the citizenship of another country. Slovakia's legislation also stipulates that automatic losses of citizenship status won't apply to cases in which people acquire dual citizenship via marriage or birth. The Hungarian law was greeted with vehement protests from Slovakia.
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