The Freedom and Solidarity party (SaS) wants to call a referendum on the euro on the day of the early elections on 10 March 2012, announced party head Richard Sulik yesterday.
The party wants the referendum to deal with the future of the eurozone and the EU and Slovakia’s place in it, and it comes in the light of the latest plans in the EU to centralise budgetary rules for members states. This would include cancelling the right of veto, which put Slovakia in the spotlight in October.
At that time, the SaS party managed to hold the whole eurozone to ransom in October when it refused to put its hand to raising the capacity of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF). It was the last country to vote, but the refusal of the SaS party eventually led to the downfall of the government after PM Iveta Radicova linked the vote to a confidence vote in her government. The EFSF vote was then immediately pushed through with the support of the opposition in the shape of Robert Fico’s Smer-SD party.
The SaS party is therefore firmly against the cancellation of the veto and the creation of a kind of fiscal union, as it feels this would compromise the sovereignty and independence of Slovakia.
Sulik and company will now rally to get support for the referendum from parliamentary parties, and if successful, President Ivan Gasparovic could then call the referendum. Sulik said he would write to all parties demanding talks in an effort to get the point included in the agenda of the next parliamentary session.