VIA IURIS: Non-election of the sufficient number of 18 nominees for constitutional judges mean that Constitutional Court will function with difficulties

VIA IURIS maintains that Parliament could have elected 18 nominees out of 29 candidates for the roles and to eventually select nine high-quality judges. However, Parliament has only elected eight nominees in their second vote. If the President selects four new judges, the Constitutional Court will only have eight judges. A decision on the illegality of law or on the invalidity of elections would, therefore, be possible only if the majority of seven of judges will agree on the decision which is rather unlikely. With its irresponsible approach to the election, Parliament moves their responsibility onto the shoulders of constitutional court judges and implicitly puts pressure on them to decide unanimously.

There are still five empty seats on the bench of the Constitutional Court. The court will only have two out of four fully functional senates. In recent times when the court only had ten judges, the court’s assembly was unable to decide on any matter as the majority of seven could not have been found. This situation caused that the court failed to decide on the issues such as the prohibition of dual citizenship, on the responsibility of pathway-owners to clear the snow or on the possibility to deny fatherhood after three years in case a father learns that a child is not his.

We perceive that the irresponsible election of merely eight nominees has to do with political games of the coalition which might dysfunction the decision-making process of the court in the most critical matters and significantly threaten the protection of human rights and the principles of the rule of law,” emphasised Kristína Babiaková, attorney-at-law collaborating with VIA IURIS.