Residency Permit in Slovakia (EU)

The Slovak Republic (short form: Slovakia) is a state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about 49,000 square kilometers. Slovakia is a landlocked country bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south. The largest city is the capital, Bratislava. Slovakia is a member state of the European Union (from the year of 2004), NATO, United Nations, OECD and WTO among others. The official language is Slovak, a member of the Slavic language family. Citizenship and passport of Slovakia is at the same time EU-citizenship. This allows Slovak citizens to reside, legally work and do business in any EU country, including The United Kingdom, Germany, and France.

In Slovakia, there is no citizenship by investment program or residency by investment program. All the cases are assessed on case-by-case basis. However, if a foreigner incorporates a company in Slovakia and has a sound and realistic business plan he can apply for temporary residence permit. Application for residency must be made in the Slovak Consulate (or Embassy) in the country of the applicant’s residence. Business plan will be considered by the Ministry of Economy. Then the Ministry will send its decision to the Consulate of Slovakia in the country of applicant’s origin. In case of success a residence permit valid for one year is issued. Permanent residency is normally possible after 5 years of residence; citizenship is possible after 10 years of legal residence. In some cases, if there are considerable investments (we feel that investments from 1 to 3 million EUR are considerable) into priority sectors of the economy the applicant can apply for permanent residence and then for citizenship of Slovakia without waiting for 5 or 10 years. And again, decisions are made on case-by-case basis.

Our company does not provide legal services in Slovakia. You can see the list of residency and citizenship programs we work with on this web page.

Questions and answers:

Question: Do you think that Slovak residency program based on business grounds or investments is the best program in the European Union?
Answer: No, we think that Bulgarian program is the best because it allows getting permanent residency (not a temporary one) based on a concrete amount of investment. Bulgaria has a direct residency program. You can invest EUR 512,000 (BGN 1,000,000) into government bonds in Bulgaria and directly get permanent residency. In addition, we recommend residency programs in Hungary (300,000 EUR bond investment required) and in Portugal (350,000 EUR property investment requirement). Both programs are very good. There is no physical residency requirement in Hungary and there is very modest (35 days during the first 5 years) physical residency requirement in Portugal.

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