MORNING NEWS HIGHLIGHTS - Wednesday, September 18, 2024 - 9 a.m.

TASR brings a quick morning overview of the most important events seen in Slovakia on the previous day (Tuesday, September 17): BRATISLAVA - In a democratic state, the opposition must be allowed to carry out its basic function, which is the supervision of the governing power and this must be reflected also in the distribution of posts in Parliament, President Peter Pellegrini declared after his Tuesday meeting with leaders of opposition political parties. "The governing coalition should enable such an arrangement and the opposition should nominate relevant candidates to these posts, those who are capable of acquiring confidence from the majority of lawmakers," stated the head of state, who pointed out that reservations against specific names had been voiced several times during nominations in the past. "Having Parliament functional and capable of passing laws to the benefit of the public must be a higher interest for the coalition and opposition than personal ambitions or unfulfilled political ideas," underlined Pellegrini. The President added that he doesn't have powers to interfere with internal disputes in Parliament. Representatives of the opposition praised the President after the meeting for his willingness to hold a dialogue with the opposition, although they blamed him for his inability to organise a joint coalition-opposition meeting that would signal the effort to bring the divided society together. They also warned that the President shouldn't only talk about the need to address the real problems of the people, but also demand to see actions to that effect from the coalition. BRATISLAVA - The newly-unveiled consolidation measures will yield less income to the state than planned and common people of Slovakia are going to bear the brunt of the pain, opposition SaS Vice-chair Marian Viskupic claimed on Tuesday. "Every single citizen will pay more in their taxes, levies and fees. When the state comes up with new taxes for firms, new levies, new charges for firms, and, unfortunately, this government has come up with a lot of them in the material passed, the overwhelming bulk of these additional costs will simply be carried over to the people. General estimates say that about 80 percent of any new costs you saddle businesses with are simply carried over to their clients and that means the people of this country," said Viskupic. Viskupic added that the only planned cuts on the expenditure side of the state is the lay-off of state clerks, estimated to save about €124 million out of the total €2.7 billion. In his view, the government should entertain the release of at least 5,000 state employees. Most of these measures will have negative impacts on Slovakia's economy, which is set to slow down. "Because of this, I'm convinced that the government will collect less from these measures than it has originally planned. Simply put, this will be a severe blow to our economy, a severe blow to its competitiveness and a severe blow to every single entrepreneur," added the SaS vice-chair. BRATISLAVA - By hiking VAT to 23 percent, the state will take €570 out of the pocket of an average family throughout the year and that's only VAT alone, 'Slovakia' party leader Igor Matovic declared at a press conference on Tuesday. "They're ushering in a new tax on financial transactions, to be applicable only to businesses and tradespeople. However, what they omitted to say was that almost one-third of this tax is planned to be collected from businesses and tradespeople sending salaries to their employees. So it can be said that the tax on financial transactions will have an impact on common people as well," said Matovic. Matovic also lambasted the coalition for enabling two percent of employee levies, deducted off their salaries once a year, to go either to their parents or the nonprofit sector. "They plan to take the entire "parental pension" from retired parents of working children, which was supposed to equal €320 million next year," he claimed. Matovic pointed out that today a mother on minimal wage with a single child is receiving a tax bonus of €140, but under the new legislation that sum will be slashed to €100 and only €50 if her children are older than 15. The bonus will also no longer apply to children older than 18. BRATISLAVA - The coalition's decision to hike VAT by three percentage points will lead to considerable increases in prices and the slightly lower VAT on foodstuffs won't offset that, MP Stefan Kiss (Progressive Slovakia/PS) commented on consolidation measures worth €2.7 billion unveiled by the coalition on Tuesday. "The 3-percent VAT hike will mean a significant increase in prices that's going to hit everyone. The slightly lower VAT on foodstuffs will fall rather short of offsetting that," Kiss opined. One of the announced 2025 consolidation measures is also the introduction of 10-percent cuts to public administration employment, which is supposed to save state coffers €124 million. According to Kiss, the government has no plans to apply austerity measure to itself and the 10-percent layoffs in the state administration are the only measure to limit its expenditure. "We have reasonable concerns that this will be chaotic and only detrimental to Slovakia," said Kiss. BRATISLAVA - The governing coalition agreed to pass a package of measures to consolidate €2.7 billion in public finances and thus squeeze down the next year's deficit to 4.7 percent of GDP, Prime Minister Robert Fico announced in the presence of other coalition partners at a press conference on Tuesday. As part of the consolidation, VAT will increase to 23 percent, although VAT on basic foodstuffs is to be reduced to 5 percent and the tax on financial transactions for businesses is to be introduced as well as increased income taxes for businesses with profits exceeding a certain level. In the Government's view, the consolidation is necessary because previous cabinets have left Slovakia's public finances in the worst state among all EU countries. "It's inevitable because we must be solid and responsible partners. We've joined the eurozone voluntarily and since we're part of it, we must respect certain rules," underlined Fico, adding that if the Government weren't to fix the public finances, loans and Slovakia's international rankings would have worsened significantly. Fico accentuated that the consolidation to be introduced will be socially sustainable. "We can state together that we've found a balance and this consolidation today won't apply only to the people, the consolidation will apply also to legal entities, businesses and banks. Everyone in this state will need to pony up in some way," he claimed. Fico praised "unprecedented compromise" in the VAT regulation that he finds well-balanced and designed to lead to lower prices of foods. "We made a deal that as far as VAT goes, we're going to introduce the basic rate of 23 percent, with all remaining foods to be taxed at 19 percent rate and the basic foods, which we reduced to 10 percent of VAT a few years ago, to go down to 5 percent rate," he claimed. The lowest 5-percent rate should apply also to medication, textbooks, rental housing and accommodation services in tourism. The Prime Minister confirmed that the Government will modify parameters of the tax bonus and the so-called "parental pension", but, on the other hand, pensioners will receive a full 13th pension this year. "No one can say that we've made a decision to reduce the volume of money pensioners receive," he stressed. BRATISLAVA - Opposition Progressive Slovakia (PS) party leader Michal Simecka is no longer a House vice-chair, as Parliament dismissed him from the post in a secret ballot on Tuesday. Seventy-seven MPs were present for the vote, with one ballot paper being declared invalid. Seventy-six MPs voted for Simecka's dismissal, nobody was against and nobody refrained from voting. A special session on Simecka's dismissal, initiated by Smer-SD and SNS MPs, was held last week. The main stated reasons for the move was the use of state subsidies by people close to the PS chief and suspicions of manipulation in the allocation of subsidies. Coalition representatives also accused Simecka of organising protests against the leadership of the Culture and Justice Ministries, from which, they alleged, Simecka's family is losing its financial backing. Simecka rejected the criticism, viewing the proposal as revenge for his carrying out his opposition job well. MPs for the opposition PS, Freedom and Solidarity (SaS), Christian Democrats (KDH) and 'Slovakia' parties said in advance that they wouldn't take part in the vote. mf