July 2019- March 2021

The Slovak Republic has a high fragmentation of government at municipal level which, according to the EU’s Country Report Slovakia 2019, creates high overheads and harms the effectiveness of local government. The weak capacities of its often-overburdened municipalities hinder the performance of the local self-government to deliver good quality services to its citizens. According to the 2016 Report of the Monitoring Committee of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, “the weakness of the current system of communication and cooperation between the regional and the local level, both independently connected only to the central level, results in a frequent overlapping of responsibilities”. In this relation Slovakia is recommended to simplify the legal, regulatory and administrative organisation of small municipalities and to reinforce the technical capacity and the managerial abilities of the human resources of the local and regional authorities.

At the request of the Slovak Government, the Council of Europe’s Centre of Expertise for Good Governance is implementing the project “Delivering Good Governance in Slovakia”. The project is co-funded by the European Commission via the Structural Reform Support Service (SRSS) and has two main objectives:

1. Providing legal and policy advice in the following areas:

  • Drafting a Strategy to Strengthen Local Governance.
  • Enhancing and strengthening the cooperation between the local, regional, and central authorities.
  • Territorial consolidation / amalgamation though the organisation of a Peer Review.
  • Improvement of the structure, competences, and financing of local governments.

2. Providing capacity-building support based on Council of Europe toolkits, in particular by:

  • Conducting an in-depth Training and Capacity Needs Analysis (TNA) at the local level in Slovakia, on the basis of which a comprehensive National Training and Capacity-Building Strategy (NTS) for public/local authorities will be prepared.
  • Preparation of tools and procedures for monitoring and evaluating training programmes as an essential tool for examining content, implementation and impact of any public policy and intervention, thereby enabling the understanding of their quality, significance and usefulness.
  • Building institutional leadership skills of mayors and senior local officials, through the Leadership Academy Programme which will include sessions on different topics relevant for the promotion of good governance at the local level.
  • Promoting the Council of Europe’s Twelve Principles of Good Democratic Governance, through benchmarking and implementation of European Label of Governance Excellence.