Slovak Parliament Reconvenes With Vision 2040 Atop Crowded Agenda

Members of the National Council of the Slovak Republic are due to return to their seats in Bratislava on Tuesday, 29 September, resuming a session that still has more than 200 agenda items outstanding. The sitting is scheduled to open with the strategic document Vision Slovakia 2040: Path to a Better Life, which Prime Minister Robert Fico is expected to present in the plenary alongside Martin Venhart, chairman of the Slovak Academy of Sciences.¹²

Vision 2040 debate

Vision Slovakia 2040 was prepared by the Slovak Academy of Sciences together with other experts. Parliament's finance and budget committee, acting as lead committee, together with the constitutional and legal committee and the economic affairs committee, examined the document and recommended that the National Council approve it. The lead committee appointed Daniel Karas as joint rapporteur, with Igor Válek, Zdenka Mačicová, Pavol Ľupták and Zdenko Svoboda named as further rapporteurs.¹²⁴

Parliament approved a change to the programme concerning the debate. Ján Richter, who proposed the arrangement, said of the document: "Dôležitá bude stratégia, tam bude časový priestor na rozpravu neobmedzovaný," while Richard Raši indicated the order of business, saying: "Po nej by sa prerokovali body ministrov."⁴

Tomáš Černěnko, described as a co-author of the vision, told Denník N that the document proposes modernisation of public administration and warned that putting off reform of local government will only make the problem harder to fix over time, arguing that fragmented local capacity is a central obstacle to a modern, data-driven state. He said some municipalities lack police, doctors or sufficient enforcement resources, adding: "Reforma samospráv sa nedá odkladať. Malé obce nedokážu vymáhať ani dodržiavanie zákonov."⁵

A packed legislative backlog

Beyond the strategic document, the session is set to take up a wide range of unresolved bills. The Health Ministry wants to push through a drug-policy amendment and stronger protection against new drugs, while the Education Ministry has submitted a bill on an integrated protection system against radicalisation and mobilisation to violence, which according to TASR is meant to regulate social networks for children younger than 16 and introduce a coordinated mechanism for assessing radicalisation risks.¹²³

A constitutional amendment before parliament would introduce the possibility of ending the legislature's term through a popular vote, and the Justice Ministry is reported by Hospodárske noviny to have a constitutional amendment pending. The Environment Ministry submitted an amendment to the Environmental Fund law in October 2025, and President Peter Pellegrini last year returned to parliament the covid amnesties law and an amendment to the gambling law; a vetoed amendment to the food law has been in parliament since May this year.¹²³

Smer-SD has an election-law amendment in second reading that would introduce a new way of voting from abroad in parliamentary elections and extend it to presidential elections; the final wording of a related adjustment on preferential voting is being negotiated with unaffiliated MPs active in the non-parliamentary Country Party. Nationalists from SNS intend to submit changes on preferential voting, and several SNS proposals remain unconsidered, including one to raise pensions after age 90. The PS party has proposed a 12-month protected period before regular elections, during which some election-law provisions could not be changed. Hnutie Slovensko has brought a bill described as targeting papalášizmus, SaS wants to remove two newly introduced criminal offences - obstruction of an election campaign and denial of the post-Second World War peace settlement - through a Criminal Code amendment, and KDH proposes letting adult specialists treat patients from the age of 15.¹²³

The Foreign and European Affairs Ministry proposes new benefits to make foreign service more attractive, an election of a member of the Council for Budget Responsibility is due, and parliament is expected to definitively decide on a proposed new Civil Code. The agenda also includes opposition motions of no confidence in seven ministers - Matúš Šutaj Eštok, Tomáš Taraba, Robert Kaliňák, Tomáš Drucker, Richard Takáč, Ladislav Kamenický and Samuel Migaľ - along with several draft resolutions and annual reports.¹²

Scheduling

According to Hospodárske noviny, discussion of Vision Slovakia 2040 will be shortened to 12.5 hours, voting on Tuesday will take place only at 17:00, and there will be no vote on Wednesday. TASR did not report the 12.5-hour limit or the Tuesday-only vote in the same terms, and the joint committee report does not specify these details, so the schedule for the debate remains subject to confirmation once the sitting resumes.²