Country data: Slovakia

All comparisons are with the figures for 10 December 2020, the previous reporting date.

The last 2 years, the COVID-19 pandemic forced Member State authorities to address pressing priorities and affected their performance in transposing EU rules to some degree. In this context, the Commission has taken a number of extraordinary measures aimed at relieving the strain on Member States’ administrative resources. Nevertheless, it has also made clear that the Member States’ legal obligations to transpose EU directives in time remain unchanged.

Transposition deficit (percentage of all directives not transposed): 1.4% (last report: 1.4%) – a stable result.         
EU average = 1.6%; proposed target (in the Single Market Act) = 0.5%

Since the previous reporting period, Slovakia’s deficit is back to what it was in May 2006. This followed 14 years without ever exceeding the 1% threshold set by the European Council. This disappointing situation is probably linked to the constraints due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Slovakia did not transpose 35% of the single market directives (9 out of 26) due to have been transposed in the 6 months before the cut-off date for calculating the deficit (1 June to 30 November 2021). This shows that Slovakia should focus its attention on overcoming its current difficulties in the timely transposition of directives.

Overdue directives: 14 (last report: 14), including 5 on connectivity/media/digital society. No directive is more than 2 years overdue.

Average delay in transposing directives: 7.8 months (last report: 7.5 months) – a slight increase by 0.3 months. Slovakia’s average delay is shorter than the EU average.
EU average = 8.6 months

Slovakia managed to close 1 long-overdue directive (due for 2 years or more), but 4 outstanding directives have been due for between 1 and 2 years. Nevertheless, their duration has been offset by the shorter duration of the remaining 10 directives, which have been due for less than 6 months.

Conformity deficit (percentage of all directives transposed incorrectly): 1.3% (last report: 1.1%) – an increase of 0.2 percentage points and the highest deficit ever for Slovakia.  
EU average = 1.3%; proposed target (in the Single Market Act) = 0.5%

The number of new infringement proceedings that the Commission has launched against Member States for incorrectly transposing single market directives has more than halved in 2 years. Nevertheless, the number of ongoing cases is still high. With 13 directives presumed to have been incorrectly transposed, Slovakia’s conformity deficit is right in line with the EU average deficit but very far from the 0.5% proposed target.

All comparisons are with the figures for 1 December 2020, the previous reporting date.

Pending single market cases: 27 (3 new cases, including 2 on the environment, and 3 cases closed, including 2 on transport; last report: 27 pending cases) – a stable result for the fifth consecutive year, directly in line with the EU average.             
EU average = 27 cases

The Commission launched 120 new cases against Member States in the reporting period (besides those for late transposition), and these were still pending on 1 December 2021. A total of 3 cases were launched against Slovakia, which is below the EU average of 4 new cases launched in the reporting period. However, Slovakia has resolved 3 cases since December 2020, which is far below the EU average (8).

Problematic sectors: the environment (12 cases), including 4 on atmospheric pollution; financial services, services and professions, and transport (3 cases each). Together, these make up 78% of all pending cases.

Average case duration: 46 months for the 26 single market cases not yet sent to the European Court of Justice (last report: 45.5 months) – this is a slight increase of 0.5 months; the average case duration is longer than the EU average.               
EU average = 42.8 months

Slovakia’s average case duration has increased by 14% in the last 3 years. The average duration of the 7 oldest Slovak cases (8 years) is partly offset by the shorter duration of the other 19 cases (around 2 years on average). Since December 2020, the country has also managed to resolve 3 cases that had an average duration of 7 years (in particular a 16-year-old case on air transport).

Time taken to comply with Court rulings: 77.5 months for the only single market case at the Court-ruling stage of the procedure and closed in the last 5 years (last report: 31.4 months).   
EU average = 46.8 months

With the fourth highest increase among the 23 Member States that complied with the Court’s judgments in the last 5 years (+46.1 months), Slovakia is in the top five of Member States that take the longest time to comply with Court rulings. This is because two cases that took a short time for the country to comply with (8.3 months) have now been closed more than 5 years and are no longer part of the calculation. Slovakia needed 6.5 years to comply with the remaining case (on waste management).

Evolution of infringement cases

Performance – Slovakia performed moderately well.

• Results for three indicators were above the EEA average.
• Performance for all five indicators was lower compared to the previous year.
• Efforts should be made to improve the number of requests answered within the agreed deadline and increase the speed in answering requests.

• Caseload – medium
  Submitted cases: 80 (63 in 2020)
  Received cases: 16 (14 in 2020)

• Cases not accepted: 46 (86 in 2020)

• Resolution rate:100% (100% in 2020)
• Handling time (as home centre)
  Reply within 7 days: 100% (100% in 2020) – very good
  Cases prepared within 30 days: 82% (72% in 2020) – good
  Solutions accepted within 7 days: 98% (98% in 2020 ) – very good

• Cases not accepted within 30 days: 80% (45% in 2020) – good

• Handling time (as lead centre)
  Cases accepted within 7 days:  100% (93% in 2020) – very good
  Cases closed within 10 weeks:  100% (100% in 2020) – very good
• Staffing level
  Sufficient

In 2022, the average payment delay (the time exceeding the legal or contractually agreed payment terms) by Slovak public authorities was 13 days.

The average number of days needed for a business to have its invoices paid by other businesses (business-to-business payments) was 49.79 days.

Note: A typical (mid-ranking) EU country is used for the EU average for all indicators except the publication rate. Due to delays in data availability, publication rate results are based on 2020 data.

Note: The EU restrictiveness indicator (EURI) measures the level of restrictiveness for the cross-border provision of services and the right of establishment for seven groups of professional services with a high share in EU firms’ intermediate consumption or cross-border mobility. The level of restrictiveness is measured on a scale from 0 (least restrictive) to 6 (most restrictive).