Legal Framework
The constitution provides for freedom of religious belief and affiliation, as well as the right to change religious faith or to refrain from religious affiliation. It prohibits discrimination on religious grounds. The constitution states the country is not bound to any particular faith, and religious groups shall manage their affairs independently from the state, including in providing religious education and establishing clerical institutions. The constitution guarantees the right to practice one’s faith privately or publicly, either alone or in association with others. It states the exercise of religious rights may be restricted only by measures “necessary in a democratic society for the protection of public order, health, and morals or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”
The law prohibits establishing, supporting, and promoting groups dedicated to the suppression of fundamental rights and freedoms, which courts have interpreted to include Nazis and neo-Nazis, as well as “demonstrating sympathy” with such groups. Violators are subject to up to five years’ imprisonment.
The law requires religious groups to register with the Ministry of Culture’s Department of Church Affairs to employ spiritual leaders to perform officially recognized functions. Clergy from unregistered religious groups do not have the right to minister to their members in prisons or government hospitals. Civil functions such as weddings officiated by clergy from registered groups are recognized by the state, while those presided over by clergy from unregistered groups are not, and these couples must undergo an additional civil ceremony. Unregistered groups may apply to provide spiritual guidance to their adherents in prisons, but they have no legal recourse if their requests are denied. Unregistered groups may conduct religious services, which the government recognizes as private, rather than religious, activities. Unregistered groups lack legal status and may not establish religious schools or receive government funding. The law exempts registered groups from the duty to notify public authorities in advance of organizing public assemblies but does not allow this exemption for unregistered groups.
According to the law, organizations seeking registration as religious groups must have a minimum of 50,000 adherents. The 50,000 persons must be adult citizens with permanent residence in the country and must submit to the Ministry of Culture an “honest declaration” attesting to their membership, knowledge of the articles of faith and basic tenets of the religion, personal identity numbers and home addresses of all members, and support for the group’s registration. All groups registered before these requirements came into effect in 2017 remained registered without having to meet the 50,000-adherent requirement; no new religious groups have attained recognition under the revised requirements. According to the law, only groups that register using the title “church” in their official name may call themselves a church, but there is no other legal distinction between registered “churches” and other registered religious groups.
The 18 registered religious groups are: the Apostolic Church, Baha’i Community, The Brotherhood Unity of Baptists, Seventh-day Adventists, Brotherhood Church, Czechoslovak Hussite Church, Church of Jesus Christ, Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession, Evangelical Methodist Church, Greek Catholic Church, Christian Congregations, Jehovah’s Witnesses, New Apostolic Church, Orthodox Church, Reformed Christian Church, Roman Catholic Church, Old Catholic Church, and Central Union of Jewish Religious Communities. Registered groups receive annual state subsidies. All but the Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession, Greek Catholic Church, Orthodox Church, Reformed Christian Church, and Roman Catholic Church have fewer than 50,000 members, but they registered before this requirement came into effect.
The Department of Church Affairs oversees relations between religious groups and the state and manages the distribution of state subsidies to religious groups and associations. The ministry may not legally intervene in the internal affairs of religious groups or direct their activities. Under the law, state subsidies to registered groups are based on the number of adherents reported in the most recent census. The state adjusts these annual subsidy payments based on inflation.
A group lacking the 50,000 adult adherents required to obtain status as an official religious group may register as a civic association, which provides the legal status necessary to carry out activities such as maintaining a bank account, entering into a contract, or acquiring or renting property. In doing so, however, the group may not identify itself officially as a religious group, since the law governing registration of civic associations specifically excludes religious groups from obtaining this status. The group must also refrain from carrying out activities related to practicing religion, such as determining its own religious teachings and practices or providing spiritual services, which from a legal perspective are reserved for registered religious groups only; violators face possible dissolution by authorities. To register as a civic association, three citizens must provide their names and addresses and the name, goals, organizational structure, executive bodies, and budgetary rules of the group.
A concordat with the Holy See provides the legal framework for relations among the government, the Roman Catholic Church in the country, and the Holy See. Four corollaries cover the operation of Catholic religious schools, the teaching of Catholic religious education as a subject in public schools, the service of Catholic priests as military chaplains and police, and the exercise of conscientious objections. A single agreement between the government and 11 of the 17 other registered religious groups provides similar status to those groups. These 11 religious groups may also provide military chaplains. The unanimous approval of all existing parties to the agreement is required for other religious groups to obtain similar benefits.
All public elementary school students must take a religion or ethics class, depending on personal or parental preferences. Schools have some leeway in drafting their own curricula for religion classes, but these must be consistent with the Ministry of Education’s National Educational Program. Representatives of registered religious communities are involved in the preparation of the National Education Program. Although most school religion classes teach Roman Catholicism, if there is a sufficient number of students, parents may ask a school to open a separate class focusing on the teachings of one of the other registered religious groups. All schools offer ethics courses as an alternative to religion classes. Alternatively, parents may request that teachings of different faiths be included in the curriculum of the Catholic classes. There are no clear requirements as to course content when teaching about other faiths in the Catholic classes. Private and religious schools define their own content for religion courses and may teach only their own religion, but they are required to offer ethics courses as an alternative. Registered religious groups approve textbooks used for religious classes, and the state finances production of the textbooks. In both public and private schools, religion class curricula do not mention unregistered groups or some of the smaller registered groups, and unregistered groups may not teach their faiths at schools. Teachers at public schools normally teach the tenets of their own faith, although they may teach about other faiths as well. The Roman Catholic Church appoints teachers of Catholic classes. Depending on the registered religious group and the school, other religious groups may appoint the teachers of their classes. Religious groups also appoint theology lecturers at public universities. The government pays the salaries of religion teachers in public schools and of university theology lecturers.
The law criminalizes issuance, possession, and dissemination of materials defending, supporting, or instigating hatred, violence, or unlawful discrimination against a group of persons on the basis of religion. Such activity is punishable by up to eight years’ imprisonment.
The law requires public broadcasters to allocate program time for registered religious groups but not for unregistered groups.
The law prohibits the defamation of a person’s or group’s belief, treating a violation as a criminal offense punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment. If such crimes are committed with a “special” aggravating motive, which includes hatred against a group or individuals for their actual or alleged religious beliefs, the defamation and incitement crimes are punishable with sentences of up to five and six years in prison, respectively.
The law prohibits Holocaust denial, including questioning, endorsing, or excusing the Holocaust. Violators face sentences of up to three years in prison. The law also prohibits denial of crimes committed by the Nazi-allied, World War II-era fascist and postwar communist regimes.
The Public Defender of Rights (ombudsperson) and the Slovak National Center for Human Rights, the country’s national human rights and equality body, are independent public institutions that consider complaints of religious discrimination and infringement on religious liberty.
The country is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Government Practices
On December 9, the Specialized Prosecution Service indicted Marian Magat, a former LSNS candidate labeled by media as a far-right extremist and admirer of Adolf Hitler, for “extensive and long-term extremist criminal activity,” which carries a maximum sentence of eight years in prison. The National Criminal Agency arrested Magat in January and charged him with more than 30 counts of extremism. These included founding, supporting, and promoting a movement suppressing basic rights and freedoms, producing and disseminating extremist materials, collecting Nazi paraphernalia, and promoting Holocaust denial in a book, Jewocracy, that he authored in 2020. On February 16, the Supreme Court rejected Magat’s appeal against an earlier decision of the Specialized Criminal Court, which had placed him in pretrial custody. The Specialized Criminal Court subsequently extended his custody from August until February 2023. In a related case, Magat had instructed his girlfriend to post the antisemitic book online for free as a gift to his fans; authorities filed extremism charges against both Magat and his girlfriend in that case. Both cases were pending at year’s end.
Media outlets reported that on April 5, the Supreme Court found LSNS party chairman Kotleba guilty of extremism and sentenced him to a six-month suspended sentence and 18 months of probation. The court, however, overruled an earlier verdict of the Specialized Criminal Court, which had sentenced Kotleba to four years and four months in prison for “founding, supporting, and promoting a movement suppressing basic rights and freedoms” in relation to a 2017 charitable ceremony featuring neo-Nazi symbols. The Supreme Court convicted him of the lesser crime of “expressing sympathies for a movement suppressing basic rights and freedoms.” The April verdict was final and could not be appealed, and, as a result of the criminal conviction, Kotleba automatically lost his parliamentary seat. In response to calls by representatives of the ruling coalition to dissolve the LSNS, claiming that Kotleba’s conviction was proof of the extremist and unconstitutional nature of the party itself, Prosecutor General Maros Zilinka announced in August that he would not attempt to ban the party. According to Zilinka, LSNS was too weak to pose an imminent risk to democracy and had low public support.
Media reported that in October, the Specialized Criminal Court in Banska Bystrica convicted Jan Pastuszek of extremism. Pastuszek, who unsuccessfully ran on the LSNS ticket in the 2020 parliamentary elections, was a parliamentary assistant to Republika party MP Milan Mazurek. Confirming its judgment from August, which Pastuszek appealed, the court gave him a three-year suspended sentence and three years’ probation for selling t-shirts depicting the Slovak fascist state president Jozef Tiso. The court also ordered Pastuszek to pay a €3,000 ($3,200) fine for a website affiliated with the Republika party called “Kulturblog” that experts said produced extremist content and where Pastuszek sold his t-shirts. Pastuszek announced he would appeal the verdict to the Supreme Court.
In September, the Office of the Prosecutor General filed a criminal complaint against the village council of Varin for naming a street after Slovak fascist state president Tiso in 2011, an act the prosecutor said violated the law that bans naming streets after representatives of the Slovak fascist regime of 1939-1945. Against the prosecutor’s earlier recommendation, village councilors in July for the second time refused to change the controversial street name, voting instead to hold a local referendum on the matter, which took place on October 29. In the referendum, a majority of the 47 percent of participating voters rejected renaming the street, but because the necessary 50 percent voter turnout did not occur, the referendum was invalid. The case before the Supreme Administrative Court remained pending at the year’s end. The National Criminal Agency had previously pressed charges against 10 of 11 local councilors for expressing sympathies with a movement aimed at suppressing fundamental rights and freedoms after they refused to vote in favor of changing the name during a municipal council meeting in August 2021; the special prosecutor dismissed those charges in January.
Despite calls from unregistered religious groups and national human rights bodies, the government did not address legal provisions that require an organization to have a minimum of 50,000 adult adherents to register as a religious group. In July, the Slovak National Center for Human Rights issued a statement saying the provisions were in breach of the constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights. The statement came in response to a motion filed in May by the Old Catholic Delegation of the Utrecht Union in Slovakia, an unregistered religious group established in 2020, which challenged the law as discriminatory and restricting religious freedom. Acting upon the same motion filed by the group in January, the ombudsperson in March formally notified the group and the Minister of Culture that she found the registration requirements to be “unreasonable, discriminatory, and not necessary in a democratic society.” She requested the Minister of Culture initiate a legal change in line with international agreements, findings of the European Court of Human Rights, and recommendations of international institutions. The ministry responded that different opinions on the matter existed among the groups cited by the ombudsman. The ministry pointed to a 2010 verdict of the Constitutional Court that ruled that the constitution ensured fundamental rights and freedoms of members of both registered and unregistered religious groups equally and that lawmakers were entitled to set a registration threshold.
The Ministry of Culture again did not reconsider its repeated rejections of the 2007 registration application of the Grace Christian Fellowship, despite Supreme Court rulings in 2009 and 2012 ordering it to do so. In the past, the ministry had said it based its rejections on assessments by several religious affairs experts that the group promoted hatred toward other religious groups. In 2020, the Bratislava Regional Court dismissed the Grace Christian Fellowship’s legal action contesting the legality of the ministry’s 2018 decision. The group appealed, and the case remained pending before the Supreme Administrative Court, which had not set a hearing date as of year’s end.
Several religious groups again criticized the government for continuing to restrict access to religious services due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On February 2, leaders of the Ecumenical Council of Churches, Central Union of Jewish Religious Communities, and Conference of Slovak Bishops, together representing 10 registered religious groups, addressed a joint letter to Prime Minister Eduard Heger. The groups requested the government ease restrictions against those who were not fully vaccinated or had not yet recovered from COVID-19 from attending religious services. These provisions had been in place since November 2021. According to the religious leaders, the government had prevented access of those worshippers to religious services, which they stated was an essential fundamental right, for an unduly long period of time.
In February, the government gradually began eliminating pandemic-related restrictions on freedom of movement and public assembly, as well as several hygienic measures concerning religious practices it had imposed in 2021. In March, the government increased capacity limits for religious services up to 500 persons or 50 percent of the capacity of the place of worship, irrespective of the worshippers’ COVID-19 and vaccination status. In April, the government lifted the remaining antipandemic measures, including compulsory use of face masks.
In February, the Constitutional Court ruled against a motion filed by the opposition Slovak Social Democracy (Smer-SD) party in 2021 that challenged as discriminatory and unconstitutional the Public Health Authority’s order imposing on citizens an obligation to present proof they were vaccinated, had recovered from the virus, or had tested negative as a requirement to access facilities and public events, including religious services. A religious freedom rights violation case that Jan Figel, a former deputy prime minister and former European Union (EU) special envoy for promotion of freedom of religion or belief outside the EU, had submitted to the European Court of Human Rights in 2021 remained pending as of year’s end. According to Figel, government measures were illegal and disproportionate and in practice prevented individuals from exercising constitutionally protected rights to religious freedom and to manifest their religious beliefs publicly.
In July, the Slovak National Center for Human Rights published its annual human rights report. The report noted that the extent of government restrictions on public assembly in 2021 was at times disproportional to the epidemiological situation and questioned the necessity of the measures taken to achieve public heath objectives. The report said less stringent means of restricting freedom of religious expression were available to the government.
According to a representative of the Muslim community, authorities generally tolerated Islamic burial customs such as ritual washing and draping of the deceased, and burial without a coffin.
Representatives of the Muslim community continued to state that Muslims faced increasing difficulties in finding suitable burial grounds for their adherents, since a cemetery they had used for these purposes in Bratislava was close to reaching its maximum capacity and the city council had not provided a new suitable location that would allow funeral services and burial according to Islamic traditions. Although the community had registered as a civic association, it continued to state that the lack of recognition as a religious group made it difficult to obtain the necessary construction permits for establishing a mosque or other sites for religious worship, such as prayer rooms. The group said officials in the past had cited technical grounds, such as zoning regulations, to reject their applications or fail to act on them. A representative of the Muslim community expressed disappointment that despite several attempts, they had not been able to meet with the mayor of Bratislava for the last four years to discuss their grievances, including hate crimes against the Muslim community, inability to establish a mosque, and issues with burial grounds.
Despite a 7.6 percent decrease in the overall number of adherents to registered religious groups reported in 2021 in comparison with the previous census, the decrease remained below the 10 percent threshold required by the law to trigger a downward adjustment in state subsidies. The government allocated approximately €52.8 million ($56.4 million) in annual state subsidies to the 18 registered religious groups, compared with €52 million ($55.6 million) in 2021 and €51.7 million ($55.2 million) in 2020. As in prior years, up to 80 percent of each group’s subsidy was used to pay the group’s clergy and operating costs. Some members of religious groups continued to state their groups’ reliance on direct government funding limited their independence and religious freedom. They said religious groups self-censored potential criticism of the government on sensitive topics to avoid jeopardizing their relationship with the state and, consequently, their finances. There were no reports, however, that the government arbitrarily altered the amount of subsidies provided to individual religious groups.
The Ministry of Culture continued to fund upkeep for religious monuments and cultural heritage sites owned by religious groups under its cultural grant program. During the year, the ministry allocated approximately €5.7 million ($6.1 million) for these purposes, compared with approximately €4.2 million ($4.5 million) in 2021 and €5 million ($5.3 million) in 2020.
Many political parties continued to express anti-Muslim views in their public statements, and leaders from across the political spectrum engaged in rhetoric opposing Islam and portraying Muslim migrants and refugees as threats to society. In February and March, during the height of the refugee crisis following Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine, representatives of the LSNS and Republika parties repeatedly warned of security risks posed by thousands of non-Ukrainian refugees, predominantly from African and Muslim-majority countries, who were fleeing Ukraine via Slovakia. In a video the LSNS posted on February 28 on the party’s official YouTube channel, LSNS party chairman Kotleba stated that most refugees fleeing the border were from Asia and Africa, whether they were “Arabs, Muslims, or Buddhists,” and not Ukrainian mothers with children. Kotleba demanded the end of their “uncontrolled” influx. The video attracted more than a half million views as of year’s end and incited extensive commentary supporting the contentions in the video. In response to these statements, police warned against disinformation and fearmongering that portrayed refugees of African and Arab origin as illegal economic migrants and a security threat. In a February 28 post on its official Facebook page, the national police force wrote, “Not only native Ukrainians were stuck in Ukraine, but also foreigners who lived, worked, were on vacation, or studied there… The movement of people of different nationalities is completely normal when fleeing a war zone.”
Representatives of the LSNS party, which received 7.97 percent of the vote in the 2020 parliamentary election and secured 17 of 150 seats in parliament, continued to make antisemitic statements and faced criminal prosecution for past statements. According to local experts on political extremism, party members and supporters frequently glorified the Nazi-allied World War II-era fascist government and its leaders and downplayed the role of that regime in wartime atrocities.
On March 14, the 83rd anniversary of the founding of the wartime Slovak state that deported more than 70,000 of its citizens to Nazi extermination camps, several groups commonly characterized by experts and media as far-right published commemorative social media posts. The People’s Youth organization, the youth wing of the LSNS, posted on Facebook a message celebrating the creation of the fascist state in 1939 as “the most important date in our history.” LSNS chairman Kotleba shared on his social media account a video of a man claiming Nazi-era president Tiso saved his life and the lives of 800 other children – a move that experts said was an attempt to glorify Tiso.
Antisemitism experts accused OLaNO party leader and Finance Minister Matovic of trivializing the Holocaust when in June he stated the media had made him “a Jew of the 21st century” in response to a poll that found him the country’s least trustworthy politician. Matovic refused to apologize, calling his statement “a cruel but apt metaphor” and comparing current media criticism of himself to scapegoating of the Jewish population in the 1930s. In a September 9 social media post commemorating the country’s Holocaust and Ethnic Violence Remembrance Day, he again compared the actions of his critics to the “total dehumanization” of Jews by fascists in the past. Prime Minister Heger called the comparison “inappropriate.”
In May, President Zuzana Caputova apologized for having bestowed earlier that month an in-memoriam presidential award on three members of the Catholic anticommunist resistance group Biela Legia (White Legion), whom the communist regime executed in 1951 for their anticommunist activities. She issued the apology after historians and experts noted the awardees had been supporters of the Naziallied wartime Slovak state and that two of them actively collaborated with the regime in suppressing the Slovak National Uprising in 1944 by providing intelligence reports to the Nazi-allied authorities. In her statement, the President acknowledged a mistake in vetting the awardees, who had been nominated by the Anton Tunega Foundation led by Jan Figel, and she promised to ensure similar “controversies” did not happen again.
On March 25, President Caputova, Prime Minister Heger, and other government officials commemorated the 80th anniversary of the first deportations of Jews from the Slovak state. On the same day, parliament opened its session with a minute of silence in memory of the victims of the first transport. It subsequently adopted a resolution condemning the “particularly reprehensible forced deportations,” expressing regret, and apologizing to the Jewish community for the actions of the Slovak fascist state. All LSNS and Republika MPs were absent during the vote on the resolution.
In August, the Council for Media Services – an independent government media regulator – assumed new functions of addressing illegal and harmful content on social media, including content defined by the law as “extremist,” such as Holocaust denial and inciting national, racial, or ethnic hatred. In December, the council launched administrative proceedings against the owner of the Hlavne Spravy (Main News) website, which experts said was a notorious disinformation outlet, for an online blog post, “Jewish Woman from Tel Aviv Reveals Falsification of the Holocaust Story,” that claimed the Holocaust was a fraud and a manipulation. While the case remained pending, the website took down the blog post following the launch of the council’s investigation.
In September, President Caputova, Speaker of Parliament Boris Kollar, Prime Minister Heger, and several cabinet ministers commemorated the country’s Holocaust and Ethnic Violence Remembrance Day at the Holocaust memorial in Bratislava. President Caputova used the occasion to warn against “relativizing evil,” while Prime Minister Heger called the memory of the antisemitic Jewish code adopted by the Slovak state in 1941 and the subsequent deportation of more than 70,000 Slovak Jews and other citizens to Nazi extermination camps a “scar that has marred our history.”
In October, the Plenipotentiary for Freedom of Religion or Belief organized an international conference on contemporary religious freedom policies and challenges in the world that included representatives of the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance and the country’s registered and unregistered religious groups. In his opening remarks at the event, Prime Minister Heger expressed the government’s dedication to human dignity and the need to learn to live the freedoms that come with democracy. During the same month, in response to reports of increasing persecution and oppression of religious believers in the world, parliament adopted a resolution to protect religious freedoms and beliefs in which it expressed concerns involving growing intolerance on the basis of faith or belief and denounced hate-motivated violence against believers.