This chapter scrutinises the Slovak models of emergency regimes, with attention to their political context.
Author
Max Steuer, Associate Professor, Jindal Global Law School, O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana, India; Department of Political Science, Comenius University in Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovakia.
Summary
Emergencies are sticky and tricky; justifications keep surfacing for retaining them, showing how legal regulations are shaped by emergency discourses. This chapter scrutinises the Slovak models of emergency regimes, with attention to their political context. Firstly, it traces references to emergencies during the constitution-making and constitution-amending processes shortly after the establishment of independent Slovakia in 1993, accounting for the shared legacies with Czechia.
This shows the insignificance of the semi-authoritarian period of 1994–1998 for calibrating emergency regulations, in contrast to Slovakia’s EU and NATO integration which underpinned a key constitutional amendment in 2001 and the subsequent adoption of the Constitutional Act on State Security (CASS). The CASS introduced four main emergency regimes, three of which have never been invoked.
The omission of emergencies for health reasons by the legislators served to justify an amendment to the CASS in 2020, on the grounds of the COVID-19 pandemic. Secondly, the Slovak Constitutional Court’s case law on the states of emergency is considered, showing the lack of preparedness for ‘practising emergencies’ in the Slovak constitutional discourse. The chapter ultimately highlights the executive’s extensive agenda-shaping role and the reactionary nature of regulation in Slovakia, troubling for maintaining democracy during emergencies.
Published in: States of Emergency and Human Rights Protection
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