Plans to introduce student tuition fees in Slovakia have been defeated after key members of the coalition Government crossed the chamber during a parliamentary vote in Bratislava.
Twelve members of the New Citizens' Alliance (ANO) voted against the Government. The result - 79 to 62 against - killed a Bill that would have brought in across-the-board fees of £350 a year for undergraduates.
It brought to an end two years of campaigning by the Education Minister, Martin Fronc, in support of legislation that he said was essential to the development of Slovak higher education.
The vote came less than two weeks after Mr Fronc narrowly survived a no-confidence vote to force his resignation. ANO MPs abstained in an expression of disapproval on a policy the right-wing Government considers key to wide-ranging social, health and cultural reforms.
Mr Fronc dismissed calls for him to quit after the collapse of the tuition Bill, noting that if coalition members did not feel bound by the government programme, he did not see why he should listen to calls for his departure.
The proposals for higher education reform will have to wait until September 2006, after Slovakia's next general election, said Monika Murova, an Education Ministry representative.
"There is no doubt this will be back on the agenda in the future as it is too fundamental a reform to be ignored," Ms Murova said.
Mr Fronc's tuition-fee plans have courted controversy over the past two years. His proposals lie at the heart of a struggle between a tradition of free education and universities' demands for more financial freedom to reform a chronically conservative system.
Student demonstrations in the Slovak capital Bratislava during the May holidays brought thousands of tuition-fee opponents onto the streets.