President Kiska respects stance of Venice Commission

Last week, the Venice Commission recommended that Slovak President Andrej Kiska respect the majority opinion of the Constitutional Court regarding the dispute over his refusal to appoint judges to the Constitutional Court. According to the press department of the President's Office, the adopted stance does not directly answer the President's inquiries. Kiska will respect the stance of the Venice Commission and he also welcomed the Venice Commission's recommendation to have the Parliament amend the Constitution with the aim of introducing sterner criteria in selecting prospective candidates for the posts of Constitutional Court judges, a goal to which even the Government committed itself in its Manifesto. The 13-member plenum of the Constitutional Court is at present three members short following Kiska's decisions from 2014 and 2016 not to appoint some of the candidates, claiming that the that they did not seem to be genuinely and deeply interested in constitutional law and were also lacking in what he deemed to be necessary skills.