Clients should no longer serve as delivery service for state offices

New rules to fight bureaucracy expected to save more than €13 million and 600,000 hours spent waiting in queues, though entrepreneurs say more still needs to be done.

Illustrative stock photoIllustrative stock photo (Source: TASR)

Despite years of promises, people acted as delivery persons between state offices, bringing various state offices the same documents even though offices were supposed to find the documents in the online registers due to the informatisation process.

SkryťTurn off ads
Article continues after video advertisement
SkryťTurn off ads
Article continues after video advertisement

A new law is changing that, however. The government has taken the first step in the form of a new law against bureaucracy that came into force on September 1, 2018. Public servants should no longer require an extract from business, trade and land registers. Moreover, as of January 1, 2019, state offices will not ask people to deliver an extract from criminal records.

SkryťTurn off ads

“We’re facing a new era of communication between people and entrepreneurs and offices which act as a prolonged arm of the state,” said Deputy Prime Minister for Investments and Informatisation Richard Raši in late August 2018, stressing that the law is expected to change the thinking of public servants.

Though the representatives of entrepreneurs addressed by The Slovak Spectator welcome the changes, they are calling for more documents to no longer be required.

“No office should require any information which is already possessed by another office or institution within the public sector, from individuals or entrepreneurs,” Ján Oravec, president of the Entrepreneurs Association of Slovakia, told The Slovak Spectator. “This is a general principle all politicians claim allegiance to. The law against bureaucracy is a retreat from this principle.”

SkryťTurn off ads

As he explained, the efficiency of the new law is degraded by the fact that only three extracts are not required after September 1, and their number will increase by only one more as of next January.

A big step forward

Individuals and entrepreneurs were asked for about one million extracts in 2017, as Raši wrote in his opinion piece for the Hospodárske Noviny daily in early September 2018. Thanks to applying the so-called once-only principle, people are expected to save more than €13 million a year on administrative fees and travelling costs and more than 600,000 hours currently spent in queues. The new rules impact about 40,000 state office workers.

The rest of this article is premium content at Spectator.sk
Subscribe now for full access

I already have subscription - Sign in

Subscription provides you with:
  • Immediate access to all locked articles (premium content) on Spectator.sk
  • Special weekly news summary + an audio recording with a weekly news summary to listen to at your convenience (received on a weekly basis directly to your e-mail)
  • PDF version of the latest issue of our newspaper, The Slovak Spectator, emailed directly to you
  • Access to all premium content on Sme.sk and Korzar.sk

Top stories

News digest: Rain causes flooding and driving difficulties in Bratislava. Slovakia under storm warning

A drunk driver gets a prison sentence, free events in Bratislava, and a corporate volunteering event returns.


2 h
Vrakuňa’s citizens presented apples washed in water with leaked toxins at the protest in 2016.

Chemical time bomb in Bratislava’s Vrakuňa keeps ticking

The state is failing to solve leaking chemical waste dump.


31. may
Jupiter (centre) and its Galilean moons: from left Ganymede, Io, Europa and Callisto. Juice with deployed antennas and arrays is in the bottom right.

From Košice to Ganymede: Slovak engineers are leaving their mark in space

Slovaks are active participants in two ongoing space missions.


20. may
The Supreme Administrative Court in Bratislava.

Q&A: How does the new justice reform affect people's lives?

The reform also known as the new map of courts became applicable on June 1 of this year.


6. jun
SkryťClose ad