The amendment to the cadastre law, which is currently being discussed by the parliament, will paralyze the public control of politicians’ property declarations. It is therefore very harmful. This was stated at the joint press conference of the opposition parties by the chairperson of the Za ľudí party, Veronika Remišová, together with Milan Vetrák from Hnutia Slovensko. According to Remišová, the draft law is in conflict with the Constitution of the Slovak Republic, so if it is approved by the parliament, the deputies will submit it to the Constitutional Court.
- The amendment to the cadastre law is intended to paralyze public control.
- The opposition claims that the proposal is against the constitution.
- The law may make it more difficult to reveal politicians’ assets and incentives.
- The amendment will make it impossible for local governments to vet municipal politicians.
- It introduces fees, complex approaches and threatens high fines.
“This government coalition is submitting another extremely harmful bill on the cadastre to the parliament. The government’s amendment to the law on the cadastre will disable the control of property relationships and property declarations of politicians. We are convinced that several provisions contained in this amendment to the law may be in conflict with the constitution,” Remišová explained. With this draft law, according to her, the government coalition disables the performance of the mission of the parliamentary committee for the incompatibility of functions, as well as the opportunity for citizens and organizations to submit initiatives to the aforementioned committee.
Attack on property?
According to Vetrák, the amendment to the cadastre law is “one huge mess”. “This law will allow people to be robbed of their land, apartments, and houses and will allow for the concealment of properties stolen in this way. Among other things, there is a serious suspicion, since the Office of Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre (ÚGKK) was directly involved in this law, that even the current management of this office wants to take part in this kind of robbery of people, or the cadastre employees want to take part in it,” underlined Vetrák.
According to him, the law itself, among other things, makes it impossible to submit initiatives under the constitutional law on the protection of public interest, i.e. the constitutional law, which is supposed to prevent politicians from stealing property from public resources. “This amendment to the law on the cadastre makes it impossible for municipalities to have their authorities check municipal politicians. This law makes it impossible for ordinary people to protect their property if there are frauds or mistakes on the part of the state or the real estate cadastre itself during the transfer or other actions with land,” he pointed out.
Technical restrictions and fines
“The law prohibits the profiling of persons, which, among other things, also includes property evaluation when a submission is made according to the constitutional law,” added Vetrák.
“The government coalition is trying to make access to information from the cadastre much more difficult, because it will introduce registrations, logins and complicated systems. By introducing fees, you have to have a really full wallet when you decide to check properties in a larger way. At the same time, it will keep information about who searched for what for four years. If you publish it, you will be fined 10,000 euros. This is an extremely dangerous an attempt by the government coalition to protect their assets, to protect those who have something to hide,” added lawyer Ján Magušin.
