Opposition MPs Ask Constitutional Court to Rule on Gov't Confidence Vote

Kosice/Bratislava, 5 February (TASR) – A group of opposition MPs has appealed to the Constitutional Court over the interpretation of the constitutional law on budgetary responsibility, with the bone of contention being the length of the time limit within which the government must ask Parliament for a vote of confidence after the public administration debt exceeds 50 percent of GDP. In their submission, the MPs proposed that the court should rule that the government was and remains obliged, after 22 November 2025, to seek a vote of confidence from Parliament at the nearest parliamentary session. According to the applicants, the conduct of the government, which didn't ask Parliament for a vote of confidence during its session held between 25 November and 12 December 2025, "constitutes a violation of the principle of parliamentary democracy, the principle of political accountability of executive power and the principle of the rule of law in their substantive meaning". The motion to initiate proceedings on the interpretation of the law was filed by a group of MPs represented by Lucia Plavakova (Progressive Slovakia). The MPs pointed out that under the debt brake law, if the level of debt reaches 50 percent, the government must ask the House for a vote of confidence. This obligation doesn't apply only to the 24-month period following the approval of the government manifesto and the initial vote of confidence. The European statistical office Eurostat issued a report on 21 October 2025 stating that Slovakia's public debt stood at 59.7 percent of GDP. "If a government that has been notified of the fact that the public debt threshold has been exceeded through official Eurostat data ignores or circumvents this obligation, it isn't merely a breach of a specific legal instruction, but interference in the very essence of parliamentary democracy. Such conduct means that the government is deliberately avoiding political oversight by Parliament at the moment when such oversight is, from a constitutional perspective, most needed," states the submission to the Constitutional Court. mf/df