President Believes Gov't Will Ask for Vote of Confidence Following US's Ruling

Bratislava, 17 June (TASR) - President Peter Pellegrini believes that the government will ask Parliament for a vote of confidence without further delay following the Constitutional Court's (US) ruling on this matter. According to the president, Parliament might deal with the request at its next session. "The Constitutional Court's ruling only confirmed my opinion as president of the Slovak Republic that the government should have asked Parliament for a vote of confidence due to the so-called debt brake long ago," Pellegrini has posted on social media. According to an interpretation of the constitutional law published by the Constitutional Court earlier on Wednesday, the government is obliged to ask Parliament for a vote of confidence immediately after it is found that the public debt threshold set in the constitutional law has been exceeded. A group of opposition MPs asked the court for its interpretation. According to them, the government's failure to request such a vote during the parliamentary session held between 25 November and 12 December 2025 "constitutes a violation of the principles of parliamentary democracy, the political responsibility of the executive branch and the rule of law in their substantive meanings". On 21 October 2025, European statistics office Eurostat published a report stating that Slovakia's public debt stood at 59.7 percent of GDP. In their submission to the Constitutional Court, the MPs pointed out that under the debt-brake law the government must request a vote of confidence in Parliament in such a case. "If a government that has been informed that the public debt threshold has been crossed via official Eurostat data ignores or circumvents this obligation, it is not merely a violation of a specific legal requirement but interference in the very essence of parliamentary democracy. Such conduct means that the government is deliberately avoiding political scrutiny by Parliament at the moment when that scrutiny is constitutionally most necessary," stated the MPs in their submission. ko/df