Slovak pasports. (source: TASR)
The Slovak passport remains among the strongest in the world based on the latest international ranking.
Slovak passport holders are able to travel without a visa to 182 countries. Altogether, another 29 countries scored similar points, placing in the top ten in the latest edition of the Henley Passport Index. This is an original ranking of all the world’s passports according to the number of destinations their holders can access without a prior visa, based on data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
Japan tops the ranking, with a visa-free or visa-free on-arrival score of 193 countries. The results also show that Russian passport holders are more cut off from the rest of the world than ever before, as sanctions, travel bans, and airspace closures limit Russian citizens from accessing all but a few destinations in Asia and the Middle East. The Russian passport ranked 50th, with the score of 119.
Last year, Slovakia made changes to its citizenship legislation, removing some restrictions from access to a Slovak passport. Descendants of Slovaks living abroad have been pushing to remove the residency requirement from the law, the main obstacle they now see in their access to Slovak citizenship.
One change is that people who accepted the citizenship of another country can keep their Slovak one, if they fulfil the condition of residence in that country at least five years prior to obtaining citizenship. But the law also makes it easier for people who descended from Slovak ancestors to gain Slovak citizenship.
Descendants of people who emigrated from Slovakia or Czechoslovakia in the last century spoke up against the requirement of legal residence in Slovakia when they requested Slovak citizenship.
