Page 17 - CE Outlook Regions 2022

November 2021, more than 63% of Slovaks would go for snap
elections (while only 34.2% of Slovaks do not agree).

In 2022, Slovakia´s political parties will be preparing for the regional
elections which from now on should be held every four years
together with municipal elections. In 2017, the electoral term was
extended from four to five years as a one-off measure in order to
make it possible to organise the next regional elections in 2022
alongside the municipal elections.

November 2022 is also a deadline for the Slovak reform of public
governance, as one of the government priorities following the 2020
elections. The commission on the reform was created in September
2021, with a delay from autumn 2020, however, the experts are
sceptical that the reform will be accomplished in time. The reform
should be based on decentralisation and subsidiarity.

In autumn 2021, the current Finance Minister Matovic introduced his
tax reform proposal, in which he proposed more generous child
allowances, a simpler personal income tax code, lowering the
corporate income tax from 21% to 19%, flexible tax depreciation,
raising the taxation of the self-employed closer to that of employees
and a special tax regime for restaurants. The political support for
such a reform, however, is not quite clear; it will be discussed in the
coming weeks and months.

Slovakia has seen one of the worst epidemic situations globally and
had to introduce a lockdown at the end of 2021. The government is
now considering implementing mandatory vaccination. Opinions on
the mandatory vaccination of high-risk groups, however, differ within
the coalition. While OLaNO and For the People parties are for
mandatory vaccination at least for people over 60 as of the start of
2022, Freedom and Solidarity doesn't have a united stance on it,
and We Are Family is against it.

At the end of 2021, the government thus tasked Health Minister
Vladimir Lengvarsky and Justice Minister Maria Kolikova with
producing an analysis of the introduction of mandatory vaccination in
the country, and prepare an analysis of the possibility of limiting the
reimbursement from public health insurance for healthcare provided
to a positive person who has voluntarily decided not to be
vaccinated. The analyses are due on January 10, 2022.

As corruption is an important issue in Slovak politics, the Slovak
Interior Ministry at the end of 2021 launched a nationwide
anti-corruption campaign advising people how to proceed when
reporting corruption, aiming at both staff and clients of district
offices. The campaign draws attention to 10 anti-corruption

17 CE Outlook 2022 www.intellinews.com