Slovak Republic

Overview and recent developments

The Slovak Republic has made significant progress in implementing some of the regulatory management tools. The RIA 2020 – Better Regulation Strategy represents a comprehensive approach towards a whole-of-government regulatory policy focusing, among other issues, on improving bot ex ante and ex post evaluation of regulations. The obligation to conduct regulatory impact assessments according to the “Unified Methodology for the Assessment of Selected Impacts” has been in place since 2008 with reforms introducing strong methodology for assessing economic, social and environmental impacts including an SME Test and impacts on innovation in 2015. Despite these improvements, in many cases Slovak ministries still struggle with the quantification of wider impacts, focusing mainly on budgetary impacts and, to a lesser extent, impacts on business. Procedures for public consultations in the later stage of the regulation-making process are well developed, with automatic publication of all legislative documents on the government portal. The 2015 reforms made early-stage consultations more prominent, especially those with business associations. Ex post reviews of existing regulations have so far focused mostly on administrative burdens, however, the RIA 2020 Strategy contains plans for more comprehensive reviews.

Despite improvements caused by creating the Permanent Committee, Slovakia would benefit from further strengthening regulatory oversight, making one body close to the centre of government responsible for evaluating integrated impacts rather than spreading the responsibility across several ministries, through members of one Committee. There is a need to improve policies on ex post reviews of regulations. Systemic use of targeted, in-depth reviews would be advisable. The RIA 2020 strategy represents a positive step forward.

Institutional setup for regulatory oversight

The Permanent Working Committee of the Legislative Council of the Slovak Republic at the Ministry of Economy established in 2015 is responsible for overseeing the quality of regulatory impact assessments. Several ministries (Ministry of Economy as a co-ordinator, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, Ministry of Environment, Ministry of the Interior and Deputy Prime Minister’s Office for Investments and Informatization) are represented in the Committee as well as the Government Office, and the Slovak Business Agency. They share competencies for checking the quality of RIAs with each one focusing on their area of competences. The Legislative Council of the Government as such is an advisory body focusing on legal quality of government regulations.

Requirements to use regulatory management tools for EU-made laws: Slovak Republic
Stakeholder engagement		Regulatory impact assessment
Development stage
The government facilitates the engagement of domestic stakeholders in the European Commission’s consultation process	Yes
Negotiation stage
Stakeholder engagement is required to define the negotiating position for EU directives/regulations	Yes	RIA is required to define the negotiating position for EU directives/regulations	Yes
Consultation is required to be open to the general public	Yes
Transposition stage
Stakeholder engagement is required when transposing EU directives	Yes	RIA is required when transposing EU directives	Yes
The same requirements and processes apply as for domestically made laws	Yes	The same requirements and processes for RIA apply as for domestically made laws	Yes
Consultation is required to be open to the general public	Yes	RIA includes a specific assessment of provisions added at the national level beyond those in the EU directives	No
		RIA distinguishes between impacts stemming from EU requirements and additional national implementation measures	No
Source: Indicators of Regulatory Policy and Governance Survey 2017, http://oe.cd/ireg.

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