Slovakia is a parliamentary republic whose prime minister leads the government. A directly elected president has limited executive powers. In March 2019, environmental activist Zuzana Čaputová became the first woman elected president of Slovakia.

A four-party coalition government formed after the 2020 parliamentary elections, headed first by Igor Matovič, and from April 2021 by Eduard Heger, both of the Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OL’aNO) party. In September 2022, junior coalition partner Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) left the government, and in December the parliament passed a vote of no confidence against the Heger government. It will continue in a caretaker capacity until early elections are held in 2023.

The 150 members of the unicameral parliament, the National Council, are directly elected to four-year terms in a single national constituency by proportional representation. In the February 2020 parliamentary elections, the liberal-conservative OL’aNO party received a plurality of votes (25 percent), defeating the previously dominant incumbent Slovak Social Democracy Party (Smer–SD). OL’aNO entered a coalition government with three other parties to control a three-fifths majority in Parliament (enough to pass constitutional amendments): the conservative We Are Family party, the liberal Freedom and Solidarity, and the newly formed For the People Formation. The vote took place peacefully, and its results were accepted by stakeholders and the public and certified by the state’s election management body. Voter turnout was 65 percent.

The legal framework for elections is considered fair.

Citizens can freely organize in political parties and movements. In 2020, 24 parties competed in the year’s elections and 6 of them entered the parliament.

There have been regular transfers of power between parties in the last three decades.

In August 2022, the opposition Smer–SD presented a petition to the president, asking her to hold a referendum on two questions: whether the government should immediately resign, and whether it should be constitutionally possible to shorten the four-year electoral term of the parliament either by a popular vote or by a resolution of the parliament. The top court ruled that the first question violated the constitution. The president then scheduled a referendum on the second question for January 21, 2023.

The citizens of Slovakia are generally able to make political choices free from external pressures.

The political rights of various minority groups are generally protected, though some groups experience serious societal discrimination that hampers their ability to achieve meaningful representation. The rights of LGBT+ individuals came to the fore in October 2022, when a gunman killed two LGBT+ people in an attack on a Bratislava gay bar. The police classified the attack as a terrorist act. The perpetrator, found dead after the attack, had published a White supremacist manifesto indicating his homophobic and antisemitic stance. The parliament passed a resolution condemning the Bratislava shooting, but the same month failed to pass a legislative proposal that would have increased the legal standing of same-sex partnerships by expanding inheritance and other rights. Fifty members voted in favor, short of the 76 votes needed for the measure to pass. Members of nearly all political parties in Parliament have expressed bias against LGBT+ people, who are poorly represented in politics. Roma are also poorly represented, and there have been reports of vote-buying in Romany settlements for local and regional elections.

Women hold 32 of 150 elected seats and are underrepresented in politics generally. The government has worked to implement action plans aimed at increasing parliamentary gender parity, but no significant change has been achieved.

In April 2022, the leader of the far-right Peoples’ Party Our Slovakia (ĽSNS), Marian Kotleba, was found guilty by the Supreme Court of promoting an ideology that aims to suppress democratic rights and freedoms in connection with his use of neo-Nazi symbols. He was given a six-month suspended sentence and 18 months of probation, meaning that did not have to go to prison but lost his parliamentary seat.

Democratically elected politicians determine public policy.

Though corruption has long riddled Slovak institutions, the government has made a significant effort to address the problem in recent years. Since 2020, dozens of state officials have been arrested and charged with corruption, bribery, and misuse of power; though many deny the charges against them, several have pled guilty. In April 2022, former prime minister Robert Fico and his interior minister, Robert Kaliňák, were charged with establishing an organized criminal group. In November, however, prosecutor general Maroš Žilinka used a controversial paragraph of the Criminal Code to scrap charges against the two, citing lack of evidence for the crimes. Nevertheless, police were ordered to further investigate the matter.

The prosecutor general used the same prerogative to scrap charges in several other high-profile cases, including ones against former finance minister Peter Kažimír, currently the head of the National Bank of Slovakia; the former head of the Slovak Information Service, Vladimír Pčolinský, who was nominated by the Matovič’s government; and the tycoon Jaroslav Haščák. All had been charged with bribery and misuse of power. Police reopened each of the three investigations and charged the suspects again.

Slovak law obliges mandatory publication of all contracts in which a state or public institution is a party, but enforcement is inconsistent. Many business leaders believe that corruption was the main reason behind their failure to secure public tenders.

The 2006 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) allows citizens to request information from state and public institutions. Slovak authorities often disclose minimal information in response to FOIA requests, citing the European Union’s General Data Protection regulation (GDPR) legislation as a pretext.

Slovak media are generally free, but the sector remains shaken by the 2018 murder of Ján Kuciak, an investigative reporter who was working on corruption and tax fraud cases. In September 2020, a court convicted and sentenced two men for carrying out the murder, but acquitted well-known businessman Marian Kočner and his associate, who had been charged with ordering Kuciak’s killing. In June 2021, the Supreme Court overturned the acquittal and ordered a retrial that was ongoing throughout 2022.

In June 2022, the parliament passed a media law that increases media transparency by mandating that online and traditional media make their ownership structures public. It also requires outlets to publicly identify all donors and investors. Online media also gained the right to information, and to enjoy protection of their sources. However, the broadly interpreted and widely criticized “right to reply,” whereby politicians may demand space in media to react to coverage about them, was left intact.

Over the course of 2022, tensions increased between OL’aNO party leader and finance minister Igor Matovič, and the media. International media freedom and journalists’ organizations issued a statement in October condemning Matovič’s aggressive rhetoric against journalists, as did editors in chiefs of Slovak media outlets, who issued a joint statement to the same effect.

Religious freedom is guaranteed by the constitution and generally upheld by state institutions. Registered churches and religious societies are eligible for tax exemptions and government subsidies.

Academic freedom is guaranteed by the constitution and upheld by authorities.

People may discuss sensitive or political topics without fear of retribution or surveillance.

Freedom of assembly is constitutionally guaranteed and upheld by state authorities, and peaceful demonstrations are common. A number of antigovernment demonstrations took place in 2022, often initiated or attended by prominent opposition politicians. Protesters criticized various policies of the government, including its support for Ukraine amid the Russian regime’s full-scale military invasion, and authorities’ slow reaction to an energy crisis.

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are free to operate and to scrutinize state authorities. In the wake of the 2022 Ukraine refugee crisis, tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees crossed the Ukrainian-Slovak border. Humanitarian NGOs criticized state authorities for their inability to provide effective help.

Trade unions in Slovakia are pluralistic and operate freely.

The constitution provides for an independent judiciary. However, there is a widespread perception of a lack of transparency and of corruption within the judicial system. In January 2022, the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) issued a compliance report concluding that that Slovak authorities had satisfactorily implemented only 2 of 21 recommendations it issued in 2019; that 3 been partly implemented, and 16 had not been implemented at all. The report also criticized the government’s slow progress in introducing measures to prevent corruption in Slovakia’s judiciary and prosecutorial systems.

Recent measures intended to enhance the quality of judicial decisions and to strengthen the judiciary’s efficiency include creation of a new specialized court—the Supreme Administrative Court—in August 2021. In addition to hearing cases on matters of administrative law, the newly established court will carry out disciplinary proceedings against judges and prosecutors.

Due process usually prevails in civil and criminal matters. However, there have been reports of warrantless detentions or detentions otherwise carried out without other appropriate authorization.

While Slovakia is free from war, insurgencies, and high rates of violent crime, police abuse of suspects is a persistent problem. Reports of police violence against Roma emerge frequently.

Roma face persistent discrimination in many forms, including from public officials and in employment. Romany children in primary schools are regularly segregated into Roma-only classes, and many are educated in schools meant to serve children with cognitive disabilities. In May 2022, a district court ruled in favor of giving financial compensation to a Romany man with special needs who was illegally detained for several weeks in 2013. Roma have been among the most visible victims of rising far right White-supremacist sentiment in Slovak society. Extremist opinions and hate speech against ethnic and religious minorities, including Roma, have grown more vitriolic in recent years.

Women are underrepresented in senior-level business and government positions. A 2021 report by the Gender Equality Index, issued by the European Institute for Gender Equality, indicated that the private-sector pay gap between men and women in Slovakia has closed modestly, but remained among the worst in the European Union.

Though there are antidiscrimination laws in place, discrimination against members of minority groups often goes unreported. Police do not always investigate or take action in cases of discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation. A 2022 poll by Slovakia’s Institute for Public Issues (IVO) showed that almost a third of respondents had witnessed or experienced discrimination on the basis of age, typically in the labor market, in health care, and in the provision of social services.

Slovakia receives very few asylum applications, and primarily functions as a transit country for asylum seekers. However, Slovak authorities apply asylum protections restrictively: just 23 of 547 applicants were granted asylum in 2022.

The government respects the freedom of movement and the right of citizens to freely change their place of residence, employment, and education.

In general, the government does not arbitrarily interfere with citizens’ rights to own property and to establish private businesses.

Personal social freedoms, including choice of marriage partner and size of family, are guaranteed and upheld by the state authorities, but a 2014 constitutional amendment defines marriage as a “unique bond” between one man and one woman. Laws neither allow nor recognize same-sex marriages or civil unions. Parliament failed in October 2022 to pass a legislative proposal that would increase legal standing of same-sex partnerships. However, in a landmark October 2022 decision, a district court granted a same-sex couple who had legally married in another country the same automatic right to permanent residency as enjoyed by couples married in Slovakia. And, following the October 2022 terrorist attack on a Bratislava gay bar, in which a bisexual man and an individual who identified as nonbinary were killed, public support for so-called registered partnership reached 48 percent, surpassing the number of those opposed by a narrow margin. Some 12 percent of respondents stated that they had changed their mind and supported same-sex unions after the terrorist attack.

Slovakia permits abortions, although conservative and far-right groups in parliament have repeatedly proposed restrictions.

Severe marginalization of Roma harms their opportunities for social mobility. Human trafficking is a problem, and mainly involves the transport of victims to countries in Western and Central Europe, where they are engaged in forced labor, sex work, and begging.