The Slovak government recently approved proposed changes to the Slovak Citizenship Act. If everything goes smoothly in parliament, starting on July 15th 2026, the new rules will apply. This article explains the key proposed changes, which we consider to be all positive.
Author: Doc. Martin Husovec, attorney at law
Context
It should be said that the Slovak Ministry of Interior seized the historical opportunity and overall did a great job operationalising a wholly new area of law. Statistics that we have tracked here speak volumes about the heroic efforts of the public servants. They went from zero to hundreds in a very short period. The application process has been clearly perfected on the go, and the decision-making speed surprised us positively.
But the Ministry ran into a number of practical issues caused by the law’s original wording. Firstly, the administrative residency requirement unnecessarily complicated the process by adding another authority and its processes into the mix. Secondly, paper-based communication slowed down pratictal sense of citizenship acquisition. And finally, the lack of detail concerning the necessary evidence may have presented the Ministry with many premature applications.
Proposed changes
To address this, the Ministry drafted an amendment that has now been adopted by the government. The next step is approval by the parliament. The key changes are as follows:
- 1. Administrative residency is entirely abolished. The law should now include a new Section 7(8) that reads:
Without fulfilling the condition under paragraph 1(a) [residency], Slovak citizenship may be granted to an applicant who was not a Slovak citizen and whose at least one parent, grandparent, or great-grandparent was a Czechoslovak citizen born in the territory of the Slovak Republic.
Thus, the law clearly seeks to abolish the administrative residency requirement.
ZIP Citizenship’s verdict: This is a huge and positive change for all applicants. This is great news because Foreign Police appointments have been a bottleneck for applications filed in Slovakia for some time. The police sometimes also applied their own interpretation of the law for the purposes of residency. Going forward, the only responsible authority will be the Ministry of Interior. This will reduce coordination costs and redundancies in the procedure.
- 2. Explicit requirement of evidence. Section 8(3)(k) of the Slovak Citizenship Act will be amended as follows:
k) a document or certificate by which the applicant proves that their ancestor was a Czechoslovak citizen born in the territory of the Slovak Republic, where the application for the grant of Slovak citizenship is submitted under § 7 para. 8.
While the text speaks of a document or a certificate, this does not mean that a single document must provide this. Thus, arguably, several documents can still be relied upon to prove eligibility. In practice, many applicants do not have direct evidence, such as Czechoslovak passports, and need to resort to circumstantial evidence, such as ship manifests, naturalisation documents, and so on. If the legislature had intended to make any substantive changes, it would have signalled this somewhere — for example, in transitional rules or an explanatory note. It did not.
The purpose of the change is to clearly clarify the allocation of the burden of proof. From that perspective, it is not a change at all. The amendment simply stipulates what has already been the case: the applicant must prove that they meet the eligibility criteria with some evidence.
ZIP Citizenship’s verdict: We do not see this as an attempt to tighten the criteria. The material eligibility criteria remain the same. This is fairly clear from the text of the law and the explanatory note.
3. Certificates of citizenship will be electronic. Section 9a(1)(e) should now include the following paragraph:
by a certificate of grant of Slovak citizenship; however, this certificate may only be used to prove Slovak citizenship within 90 days of its receipt pursuant to § 8a para. 10.
This change tries to address a step that follows the Ministry of Interior’s decision on citizenship by descent. After the grant, the applicant is issued a deed — following the taking of an oath — and must apply for a paper-based certificate. Only after obtaining it can the applicant apply for a passport. The change simplifies the process by creating a dedicated system where, following the grant, a certificate will be issued electronically, which can then be used to apply for a passport. Moreover, Section 9a(2) removes the need to attend an authority in person to apply for such a certificate. It now adds:
An application may also be submitted electronically or by post to a Slovak diplomatic mission or consular office.
This means that applicants residing abroad can simply mail or email their diplomatic mission to have the electronic document issued. Once issued, they may use it to apply for their passport within 90 days. After that window, they revert to the existing system.
ZIP Citizenship’s verdict: This demonstrates a genuine effort by the Ministry of Interior to cut red tape and speed up the process further.
All these changes will clearly help many people to reconnect with their roots.