Trnava Foreigners' Police on Paulínska Street in Trnava on March 17, 2023. (source: P.D. for The Slovak Spectator)
The Interior Ministry is expanding the number of front-desk offices at Foreigners’ Police departments to cope with a sharp rise in residency applications, the ministry’s press office said on Friday.
From Monday, 15 new client-service workstations will open across the country, with the aim of speeding up the application process for foreigners seeking to live in Slovakia. The move follows what the ministry described as an “enormous” increase in applications.
The new desks will operate on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 7:30 to 15:30. According to estimates by the Border and Foreigners’ Police department, the staffing boost will allow them to process an average of 260 applications on each of these days.
The capital, Bratislava, will see the greatest increase, with five new workstations set to open. Single workstations will be added in 11 other cities including Košice, Prešov, Nitra and Banská Bystrica. Appointments must be booked in advance through the online reservation system, which now allows bookings up to seven days ahead.
In addition, offices in Košice and Michalovce will receive two extra workstations each to process applications for temporary protection from Ukrainian refugees. These services will operate daily from 8:30 to 14:00, with reservations required five days in advance.
The ministry is also making it possible to book appointments up to 40 days in advance and has simplified the online booking form to make it quicker to complete.
