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Slovakia Avoiding Conflict to Secure Stability

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Slovakia Avoiding Conflict to Secure Stability 23 Slovakia Avoiding conflict to secure stability Tobias Schulz and Martina Chabreckova Before 1998 it looked like Slovakia would not be able to keep pace with the other Eastern European countries because of lacking reforms. The reason for this lay in the undemocratic developments during the 1994 to 1998 term of Prime Minister Meciar and his party, the HZDS (Movement for a Democratic Slovakia). The appointment of the government in 1998 marked thus a turning point in the history of the young democracy of Slo- vakia. The new Prime Minister Dzurinda together with his party, the SDKÚ (Slovak Democratic and Christian Union), was able to push through economic and institutional reforms that are without equal and hence paved the way into the European Union. In 1997 the EU did not include the country into the circle of the states that were considered for enlargement (European Commission 1997). Slo- vakia finally managed to overhaul the constitution in 2001 (Ucen 2002) and to join the first wave of Central and Eastern European countries that gained membership in spring 2004. After the negotiation of accession conditions in December 2002, over 92 percent of voters agreed to this step in the accession referendum in May 2003, although the necessary turnout quorum of 50 percent was met only just closely. The SDKÚ, still the second strongest party behind the openly Euro- skeptic HZDS, remained the driving force toward the goal of the country’s integration into the EU and NATO. The new ANO (Alliance of the New Citizen) is very similarly oriented. The SMK-MKP (Party of Hungarian Coalition), and the KDH (Christian Democratic Movement) on the other hand, are known to be somewhat less ambitious in this direction. The latter party occasionally tried to capitalize on these differences (Gyáfásoá 2003). All Slovak parties are generally rated higher in terms of Euro-enthusi- asm than those in many of the other new members (Taggart and Szcer- biak 2004: 16). There will be no referendum on the constitutional treaty1 and ratification by parliament went smoothly on 11 May 2005. Economically, the strong commitment has paid off: the Slovak Repub- lic’s growth lay ahead of that of the Czech Republic’s and now lies well above 4 percent. The GDP-share of the agricultural sector is already below 202 T. Schulz and M. Chabreckova 3.5 percent. On the other hand, unemployment is still the main obstacle because, apart from the regions near the capital, economic structures are very weak in the periphery and hence Slovakia has one of the highest unemployment rates of about 16–17 percent. Slovakia also managed to target the issue of compliance with the EMU criteria rather early and now is regarded, together with other smaller new members, as Latvia for example, to be able to enter the Exchange Rate Mechanism 2 (ERM-2) in 2005. Lithuania, Estonia and Slovenia have already taken this step. Domestic structures in a comparative perspective Slovakia is a parliamentary democracy, although it has a directly elected president. This president, however, is holding very limited powers, actually only the possibility to dissolve the assembly under certain circumstances. In addition, he might send back legislation to the assembly. There, however, a simple majority can easily overrule the decision. All parties except the Party of the Hungarian minority (SMK-MKP) and the KDH are “new” parties that resulted from shifts during the first legis- lature of Dzurindas government: The ANO was newly founded in 2001 and the SDKÚ emerged in 2000 from the KDH after the exit of Prime Minister Dzurinda. The government consists of a four-party coalition (ANO, SDKÚ, KDH and SMK-MKP) that narrowly secured a majority during the time of the Convention and the IGC 2003–4. The SDKÚ is the largest with a share of seats in the lower house of about 35 percent.2 However, because of the res- ignation of three ANO members from their party and because of the refusal of the seven members of the Free Forum (SF) – that had split from the SDKÚ in December 2003 – to join the government, the government majority has virtually disappeared, although former Defense Minister and SF leader Ivan Simko declared that he will not overthrow the government (Ucen 2003; Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 2 October 2003; Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 16 January 2004). The Slovakian parliament is unicameral, with 150 members that are elected according to a highly proportional electoral system. Formally, the dominance of the assembly stands on firm grounds. Not only can it provoke a vote of confidence and vote down the government or even a single member of government, it is also authorized to impeach the presid- ent, to call for a popular recall of the president, to call for referendums and even to establish governmental departments. However, the power of government very much depends on the political context and party discipline in particular (Malová 2001). Whereas in 1998 4.7 effective parties had been counted, this figure rose to about six in 2002 (Armingeon and Careja 2004), which underlines the low stability of the party system (Morlino 2001). Beside party stability and coherence, there are additional reasons for Slovakia 203 the instability of the political system (Morlino 2001: 94). First, the assem- bly has to approve individual ministers with a qualified majority. This results in a situation similar to that in Italy, where the parties have much influence on the choice of ministers. Second, in the beginning of the republic, informal rules had been established that have not fostered stability (Bárány et al. 2001). Despite these pitfalls, majority governments have always been possible to form in the Slovak Republic, although the margin became very narrow for Dzurinda in 1998 (Blondel and Müller-Rommel 2001: 223). The government of Dzurinda had been reaffirmed in the 2002 elections but the path to stability is still not assured. The problem nowadays is that the main political conflicts have to be settled within the government. Although the fear of the political return of former Prime Minister Meciar still unites the governing parties, party discipline is in decline again. Also similar to the Czech Republic, Slovakia has undergone a reform of its system of federalism. This had led to the establishment of eight regional districts and 79 sub-districts and to a general expansion of the administration. However, this was not necessarily accompanied by a strengthening of self-administration and autonomy, which is still an ongoing process (Kipke 2004: 296). Therefore, Slovakia remains a central- ized system in which the regions do not really participate in national politics. Constitutional policy coordination In the case of the Slovak Republic, the administrative body that stood in the center of the position formation process was the Department of Internal Affairs and Institutions of the European Union affiliated to the division for European affairs of the foreign ministry (Figure 23.1). Its head, State Secretary Ivan Korcoc was also the delegate to the European Convention. His deputy, Juraj Migas is the head of the mission of the Slovak Republic to the European Communities in Brussels. One would therefore assume that in Slovakia also, the process was organized in a conventional way, with the ministry of foreign affairs being responsible for the formulation of the position. However, following an initiative of former State Secretary Jan Figel in December 2000, the min- istry of foreign affairs itself initiated a National Convention,3 i.e., a tempo- rary organization that aimed at providing a platform for interested persons and organizations outside the government to discuss the pro- posals of the EU Convention. The National Convention was composed of actors from citizens’ action groups (NGO’s), the churches, think tanks and all parties (Bilcík 2003). The National Convention had its constituent assembly in May 2001 and met twice a year. Contrary to the Czech National Forum, its influence on the Slovakian position was considerable. From August 2002 on, it had 204 T. Schulz and M. Chabreckova Government Policy Position Draft constitution by at the IGC the Convention Prime ministerial Office (PM) Figure 23.1 Slovakia: domestic policy coordination for the IGC 2003–4. been the explicit task of the National Convention to formulate a position on the EU draft constitution. Of course, the foreign ministry still was in charge of the coordination and the formulation of the final texts, however, the input from the National Convention cannot be ignored. In April 2003 the National Convention approved a final document that had been drafted by the foreign ministry (Tlacova Agentura Slovenskej Republiky and BBC Monitoring European, 1 April 2003). This document then was dis- cussed in the government. Moreover, the National Council was involved in a similar manner. Apart from the regular consultations that occurred between the government and two commissions of the parliament that had been entrusted with the task,4 the National Council also had been con- sulted at about the same time – on 26 February 2003 – and it acknow- ledged and supported a report of the government on the European Convention (Bilcík 2003). The final position of the Slovak government was then again presented to and discussed in the National Council as well as the National Convention in September before being adopted by the cabinet (Tlacova Agentura Slovenskej Republiky, 14 September 2003a and 17 September 2003). As we believe that the National Convention, which met repeatedly,5 had a relatively strong standing in the process, we have integ- rated this player in Figure 23.1. However, our interviewees did not con- sider it as an equal partner in the whole process. In a strict sense, the National Convention was not meant as a forum to produce input for the governmental position.
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