ZMOS: Court Ruling Means Municipalities Must Respect Equal Vote Weight

Bratislava/Partizanske, 24 June (TASR) - Cities and municipalities will have to clearly comply with the constitutional principle of equal voting power for citizens across individual electoral districts, chair of the Slovak Association of Towns and Villages (ZMOS) Jozef Bozik told TASR in response to Wednesday's ruling by the Constitutional Court that part of the law on the capital city of Bratislava is incompatible with the Constitution. According to Bozik, ZMOS respects the court's decision. The ruling will have to be addressed both by Bratislava's city council and by Parliament. Referring to a statement by the prosecution service, he also warned that failure to respect the constitutional principle could lead to the annulment of election results in individual towns and municipalities. Bozik said that most local authorities are willing to address electoral district arrangements in line with recommendations from Public Ombudsman Robert Dobrovodsky, who has stated that he is legally obliged to alert the Prosecutor-General's Office to constitutional violations. "As a result, city councils and, where applicable, municipal councils in localities with multiple electoral districts will have to clearly respect constitutional principles that were not discussed particularly often in the past. The time has now come for us to adapt to this," Bozik said. He warned that if municipalities failed to comply with the principle of equal voting power across electoral districts, the prosecution service will act on the matter, according to statements made at a meeting of the ZMOS Council. Administrative courts could, within ten days and following a motion from prosecutors, overturn decisions adopted by municipalities, or election results themselves could be annulled. "I do not believe that any city or municipality (...) will risk having decisions overturned or elections annulled because of a decision that fails to respect a constitutional principle," he said. Bozik also expressed regret that the ombudsman's initiative had not been addressed in 2023 or 2024, which, he said, would have spared local authorities from facing this pressure ahead of municipal elections. The Constitutional Court ruled on Wednesday that part of the law governing the capital city of Bratislava, specifically provisions concerning the number of councillors elected in individual city districts, is unconstitutional. In this respect, the court upheld a petition filed by the public ombudsman. The court found the provision to be incompatible not only with the Constitution but also with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The contested provision states that "the number of councillors elected in individual city districts shall be determined by the city council according to the proportion of the district's population to the total population of the capital city, while each district shall have at least one representative on the city council". The ombudsman challenged the provision on the grounds that it violates the principle of equal suffrage. mf/mcs