Political system of Slovakia

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The Slovak national coat of arms

The political system of the Slovak Republic is organized as a republic with a parliamentary system of government . The strongly competing political parties are of central importance. The National Council, a unicameral parliament, forms the legislative power . The elections to the National Council and the European elections are carried out as proportional representation. The head of state is the president , who is directly elected by the people. The Constitutional Court monitors compliance with the constitution.

State institutions

legislative branch

National Council

National Council building

The legislative authority is the National Council of the Slovak Republic (Slovak: Národná rada Slovenskej republiky ), a unicameral parliament with 150 members. The deputies are elected for four years according to a proportional representation procedure. The main task of the National Council is to control the government and pass laws. The mandate is freely exercised. In certain crisis situations, the National Council can be dissolved by the President.

choice

The House of Representatives is elected using a proportional representation procedure. The entire national territory forms a single constituency. There is a threshold of 5% for individual parties, 7% for a coalition of two to three parties and 10% for four or more parties. The votes are converted into mandates according to the Hagenbach-Bischoff procedure . Citizens have the option of choosing concrete candidates from the list with four preferential votes. This has an influence on the order of the list if more than three percent of the votes cast result in the preference votes for a candidate. Only then does the order on the electoral list change according to the preference votes. In the European elections , proportional representation is also used.

See also: Elections in Slovakia - parliamentary elections

executive

president

Seat of the President, Grassalkovich Palace

The President is the head of state and represents the state externally in accordance with Article 102 of the Slovak Constitution. He is elected by direct election, the term of office is five years, re-election is possible once.

The President independently appoints the Prime Minister and then the ministers in agreement with him. It also negotiates and ratifies international treaties, but can transfer this power to the government. In certain situations he can dissolve the National Council. In the legislative process he signs laws and has a suspensive veto . In this way, he can send a draft law back to the National Council (possibly with proposed amendments). He appoints the judges of the Constitutional Court and the Attorney General. He has the right to mitigate or cancel penalties and can issue amnesties.

With a three-fifths majority of all MPs, the National Council can initiate a voting procedure for the president, which consists of a referendum. If the people confirm the president in this, the mistrust is automatically expressed in the National Council and it is dissolved.

government

The government is the highest body of the executive branch and consists of the prime minister (Slovak: predseda vlády ), the deputy prime minister ( podpredseda ) and the ministers . A member of the government cannot be a member of the National Council at the same time. If this situation arises, the parliamentary mandate will not be exercised and a substitute will stand on the National Council for the time being.

After taking office, the government needs the confidence of the National Council. The National Council can also force the government to resign with a vote of no confidence. Parliament can also express suspicion to individual members of the government. In this case, the president has to remove the member of the government from office. The government is responsible to the National Council. From a formal point of view, the government decides as a college. The approval of the majority of its members is required for the adoption of a resolution. It can issue ordinances to implement laws.

Regional administration

Slovakia is a unitary state. The national territory is divided into eight self-government districts (Slovak: samosprávny kraj ) or higher territorial units (Slovak: vyšší územný celok ). In these regional authorities, self-governing bodies are elected as representatives of the people (Slovak: zastupiteľstvo ). The administration at this level is the responsibility of the regional district offices (Slovak: krajský úrad ). The state administration is further divided into 72 district offices (Slovak: okresný úrad ). The municipalities form the lowest level of self-government.

Judiciary

The judiciary consists of the constitutional court and the general courts, which are laid out in three levels. There is a two-stage instance train.

Constitutional Court

The Constitutional Court (Slovak: Ústavný súd Slovenskej republiky ) is an independent constitutional body and a special court in matters of constitutional law. The main competence of the court is the repeal of unconstitutional laws. The court is composed of 13 judges who are appointed by the President of the Republic for a period of 12 years on the proposal of the National Council. The constitutional court has its seat in Košice .

General dishes

The system of courts consists of the Supreme Court of the Slovak Republic (Slovak: Najvyšší súd Slovenskej republiky ) in Bratislava, eight regional district courts (Slovak: Krajský súd ), and 54 district courts (Slovak: Okresný súd ).

In 2004, the Special Court (Slovak: Špeciálny súd ) was established, which works together with an office of the Special Public Prosecutor's Office (Slovak: Úrad špeciálnej prokuratúry ) for criminal cases in the area of ​​corruption, bribery, particularly serious financial and property crimes or organized crime. Responsibility is specifically defined for certain groups of persons (e.g. judges, holders of high state offices, members of parliament) and for certain types of criminal offenses throughout Slovakia. The court is located in Pezinok .

The Higher Military Court (Slovak: Vyšší vojenský súd ) in Trenčín and three military district courts (Slovak: Vojenský obvodový súd ) in Bratislava, Banská Bystrica and Prešov were abolished on March 31, 2009 and powers were transferred to general courts.

Other constitutional organs

Other constitutional bodies are the Public Prosecutor's Office of the Slovak Republic (Slovak: Prokuratúra Slovenskej republiky ), the Ombudsman (Slovak: Verejný ochranca práv ) and the Supreme Control Authority of the Slovak Republic (Slovak: Najvyšší kontrolný úrad Slovenskej republiky ).

Parties

A moderate pluralism has established itself in Slovakia . After the elections in 2020 , the following parties will be represented in the National Council:

In the young Slovak history, Hnutie za democické Slovensko (HZDS) (German: Movement for a Democratic Slovakia ) was of particular importance, which dominated Slovak politics in the 1990s and was the party with the highest number of votes in the Slovak parliament until 2006. After a strong loss of votes in the 2006 parliamentary elections and failing to move into parliament in 2010, the HZDS dissolved independently in January 2014.

Other parties that have been partially represented in parliament since independence in 1993 are the Strana maďarskej komunity (SMK) (German: Party of the Hungarian Community ), Most – Híd (German: Brücke), Kresťanskodemokratické hnutie (KDH) (German: Christian-Democratic Movement), the Združenie robotníkov Slovenska (ZRS) (German: Workers Association of Slovakia ) and Komunistická strana Slovenska (KSS) (German: Communist Party of Slovakia ) are of importance.

literature

  • Petr Just. Politický systém Slovenska. In: Ladislav Cabada - Vladimíra Dvořáková. Komparace politických systémů III. Praha: Oeconomica, 2004, 330 pp., ISBN 80-245-0806-0 (also online ; MS Word ; 279 kB)
  • Kopeček, Lubomír. Politické strany na Slovensku 1989 až 2006. Brno: Centrum pro studium demokracie a kultury, 2007, 628 p., ISBN 978-80-7325-113-0
  • Rudiger Kipke. The political system of Slovakia. In: Ismayr, Wolfgang [ed.]. The political systems of Eastern Europe. Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 2002. pp. 273-308
  • Radoslav Štefančík. Christian Democratic Parties in Slovakia. Trnava: UCM, 2008, ISBN 978-80-8105-016-9

Web links

Legislative branch:

Executive:

Judiciary:

Political parties:

Other:

See also

Footnotes

  1. ^ Organization of courts of the Member States - Slovakia. In: e-justice.europa.eu. Retrieved May 19, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Vojenské Sudy od apríla zaniknú, rozhodol parliament. In: Pravda. February 11, 2009, accessed May 19, 2020 (Slovak).