The Slovak Republic has made significant progress in implementing some of the regulatory management tools. The RIA 2020 – Better Regulation Strategy represents a comprehensive approach towards a whole-of-government regulatory policy focusing, among other issues, on improving bot ex ante and ex post evaluation of regulations. The obligation to conduct regulatory impact assessments according to the “Unified Methodology for the Assessment of Selected Impacts” has been in place since 2008 with reforms introducing strong methodology for assessing economic, social and environmental impacts including an SME Test and impacts on innovation in 2015. Despite these improvements, in many cases Slovak ministries still struggle with the quantification of wider impacts, focusing mainly on budgetary impacts and, to a lesser extent, impacts on business. Procedures for public consultations in the later stage of the regulation-making process are well developed, with automatic publication of all legislative documents on the government portal. The 2015 reforms made early-stage consultations more prominent, especially those with business associations. Ex post reviews of existing regulations have so far focused mostly on administrative burdens, however, the RIA 2020 Strategy contains plans for more comprehensive reviews.
Despite improvements caused by creating the Permanent Committee, Slovakia would benefit from further strengthening regulatory oversight, making one body close to the centre of government responsible for evaluating integrated impacts rather than spreading the responsibility across several ministries, through members of one Committee. There is a need to improve policies on ex post reviews of regulations. Systemic use of targeted, in‑depth reviews would be advisable. The RIA 2020 strategy represents a positive step forward.
