2009 Assessment

This peer-reviewed country report includes:

Integrity Indicators Scorecard: Scores, scoring criteria, commentary, references, and peer review perspectives for more than 300 Integrity Indicators.

Reporter's Notebook: An on-the-ground look at corruption and integrity from a leading local journalist.

Corruption Timeline: Ten years of political context to today's corruption and integrity issues.

Slovakia poses a conundrum. Although the former communist country is now a member of the EU and a relatively stable democracy, there are significant weaknesses in its overall anti-corruption and accountability framework that threaten to undermine Slovakia's progress toward more open and democratic governance. For example, while civil society is robust, the government has demonstrated little interest in engaging with civil society organizations and involving them in the policy making process. And although there is a free and independent media, the state-owned media tends to favor government political parties in their coverage while some journalists have become PR mouthpieces for private business companies. Despite a healthy voting and election integrity system, the regulations that govern political financing continue to be ineffective. An independent auditing body to monitor the financing of political parties and individual candidates does not exist, and not all political parties disclose their donations. While Slovakia's ombudsman and audit agency as well as business/taxes and customs system earn healthy ratings, the accountability mechanisms that oversee the judiciary, executive, and legislature are weak. Conflicts of interest regulations for national-level judges, for instance, are poorly enforced and the capacity to monitor and control the national budget process is concentrated in the executive branch.