One of four questions in referendum on family unconstitutional

One of the four questions in the proposed referendum on family runs against the Slovak Constitution, the country’s Constitutional Court ruled on October 28 at a closed plenary session. The unconstitutional item seeks one’s views as to whether or not one is in favour of not granting special protection, rights and obligations other than to a marriage of a husband and wife.

One of the four questions in the proposed referendum on family runs against the Slovak Constitution, the country’s Constitutional Court ruled on October 28 at a closed plenary session. The unconstitutional item seeks one’s views as to whether or not one is in favour of not granting special protection, rights and obligations other than to a marriage of a husband and wife.

The Alliance for Family (AZR) civic association has initiated a referendum on the status of family to be rooted and clearly defined in the Slovak Constitution. Having collected enough signatures, it filed the referendum petition to President Andrej Kiska who turned to the Constitutional Court to scrutinise the constitutionality of the referendum’s proposed questions.

The other three questions were deemed to be in line with the Constitution. They concerned the use of the word marriage only when referring to the union of a man and a woman, a question on preventing same-sex couples from adopting children, and the idea of preventing schools from requiring that pupils attend classes dealing with sex education and euthanasia if their parents are against it.

The Family Alliance (AZR) collected more than 400,000 signatures in its petition in support of the referendum before submitting the respective documents to the President’s Office on August 27, the TASR newswire wrote.

Kiska will as soon as possible examine the ruling of the Constitutional Court and then inform about his decision. The president’s spokesman Roman Krpelan said for the SITA newswire that the decision of the Constitutional Court has not yet been delivered to them.

Pursuant to the constitution, a referendum is declared by the president based on a petition with at least 350,000 signatures of citizens, within 30 days of receipt of the petition.

(Source: TASR, SITA)
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.

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