Slovakia doesn't possess enough capacities to facilitate international adoptions, said opposition MP Natália Blahová at a session of the parliamentary human rights committee on Tuesday. Labour, Social Affairs and Family minister Ján Richter doesn't agree. He insists that if it isn't possible to find a new home for a child in Slovakia, it should be given the chance for one abroad. The Minister said that this is exactly what the Centre for International Legal Protection of Children and Youth strives to do. Ján Richter pointed out that 14 children left for Malta, Monaco and the Netherlands in 2015. He also stressed that it's important for Slovakia to have the same rules in place as every country in terms of these adoptions. As Ján Richter added, Slovakia has agreements for international adoptions with Monaco, the Netherlands, Malta and France, and would also like to cooperate with San Marino, Austria, Germany and Luxembourg in the future.
The minister emphasised the importance of two-stage supervision, which should prevent any problems and provide children with a happy life with a family abroad. Opposition MP Natália Blahová called this two-stage system into question, however. "How come they didn't find out that there were four applications for the same child? How is it possible that this child was almost already on a plane?" posited Natália Blahová, pointing to cases in which Slovak institutions keep failing. One such case concerns a blind child that is set to be adopted from abroad. The opposition MP said that the child's state of health isn't good enough for it to be adopted. It's also not right because the child has a relative here in Slovakia and four applications concerning this child came from Slovakia.
Opposition MP Natália Blahová also criticised a report on international adoptions in 2015 drafted by the ministry. "There's nothing tangible in it, just the fact that the centre accompanied 14 children abroad," she stated. The committee chairperson, Veronika Remišová, also perceives a lack of concrete results in the report. Labour, Social Affairs and Family minister Ján Richter said that the report was supposed to be just a statement on the centre's activities, but he'll tell the centre to develop a more specific version.
