National Council of the Slovak Republic in the Process of Integration
Eva Kičinová
The topic of the paper is to evaluate recent activity of the National Council of the Slovak Republic and its respective bodies in the field of the foreign policy of the Slovak Republic with an emphasis on the process of the European integration. The National Council will play an important role in the approval and passing of the Accession Agreement, requiring a qualified majority (three-fifth majority) of all members of the parliament. At present, the harmonisation process takes place at the level of the National Council through passing of the aligned legislation submitted by the government. At the same time, a special department of the Office of the National Council performs the assessment of the compliance of legislation with the Community law. In order to accelerate the process of harmonisation, the preconditions were created in the amended Constitution of the Slovak Republic for adoption of so called “harmonisation government regulations”. The government was thus authorized by the constitutional and legal mandate to regulate by its regulations those areas of legislation stipulated by law. These regulations differ from the standard government regulations by the included option to entail the obligations and the option to authorize issuing of the executive regulations. The implementation of EC directives of the technical character is carried out mostly by the harmonisation regulations in order to accelerate the harmonisation process. The legislator did not rule out the possibility of implementation of the EC directives by the harmonisation regulations also after the accession of the Slovak Republic to the European Union. However, for this purpose it will be necessary to consider the requirements for the transposition of this legislation resulting from the acquis communautaire (requirements for the form, contents and the date of the transposition provision). The bodies of the National Council, dealing with the EU accession issues are namely the Committee of the National Council of the SR for the European Integration, the Foreign Committee of the National Council of the SR as well as some expert units of the Office of the National Council of the Slovak Republic. With regard to the future position of the National Council in the framework of the enlarged European Union it will be necessary to consider the method of operation of these bodies concerning in particular the mechanism of the control of the government and its ministers directly involved in the creation of the European legislation.