An amendment to the Act on the Conditions for Exercising Voting Rights passed to its second reading in Parliament on Tuesday, restricting the method of voting from abroad to in-person voting at diplomatic missions, while also adjusting the level of deposits for parties running in elections.
"The new piece of legislation reflects a long-standing demand from voters living abroad to vote in person at diplomatic missions in national elections, thus making it possible to exercise the right to vote on the territory of the state in which voters are living at the time when an election is held, without needing to travel to the Slovak Republic to vote, or without needing to perform the procedure necessary for postal voting," according to the coalition Smer-SD MPs who sponsored the bill.
In addition to parliamentary elections and referendums, the amendment extends voting at embassies and consulates to presidential elections. Until now, voters without permanent residence in Slovakia could vote in presidential elections only in person on election day at a polling station in Slovakia. Replacing in-person voting at a polling station in Slovakia with voting at an embassy will make it more convenient for this group of voters, stated the sponsors.
Both junior coalition parties Hlas-SD and the Slovak National Party (SNS) have comments regarding the amendment as drawn up by their coalition partner Smer-SD. Hlas-SD caucus chair Robert Puci considers it a priority to ensure that voters abroad won't be limited to casting their ballots at diplomatic missions only, while SNS leader Andrej Danko has again spoken about the need to adjust preferential voting.
Danko emphasised that the coalition isn't going to abolish voting from abroad, but he believes a change to the postal voting model is necessary. He thinks that in the future it might be possible to vote from abroad via an app, for example.
According to him, SNS has certain reservations about the original proposal prepared by Smer-SD. For instance, it wants to incorporate changes in preferential voting and push through greater control over the financial resources of political parties, along with certain comments raised with regard to election deposits.
Puci remarked that comments also arose from the plenary debate during which "quite a few questions were raised about whether there will be only one place in a given country for voters to cast their ballots".
By proposing changes to voting from abroad, the ruling coalition is showing that it is not interested in people living outside Slovakia, according to SaS Chairperson Branislav Gröhling. Michal Šimečka, the leader of PS, added that the coalition aims to ensure that as few voters seeking change as possible can express their opinion. KDH Chairperson Milan Majerský considers the proposal to be purely political calculation.
“Today, the National Council sent a signal to all people in Slovakia that at a time when fuel prices are rising again, EU funds are at risk of being frozen, and the economy is heading into recession, none of this interests the MPs. The most important thing for them today is to abolish postal voting,” Šimečka told reporters. “The only thing they care about is entrenching themselves in power and taking away from people living abroad—our citizens—the ability to vote and express their opinion,” he said.
Under the amendment, election deposits for parliamentary elections and for European Parliament (EP) elections will now be based on the average monthly salary. For parliamentary elections, this will be 25 times the average monthly salary instead of the original amount of €17,000, and for EP elections, 2.5 times the average monthly salary (instead of €1,700).
If adopted, the amendment will be effective from 1 September 2026.
Source: TASR
