On July 1, 2018, a new government regulation in the area of investment aid (No. 195/2018 Coll.) comes into force, laying down the conditions for granting investment aid, the maximum investment aid intensity, and the maximum amount of investment aid in the regions of the Slovak Republic (the “Regulation”).

The Regulation repeals the previous one (No. 219/2015 Coll.) and introduces several major changes to the process of granting investment aid in the Slovak Republic.

Briefly, for the purposes of determining conditions for granting a contribution towards newly created jobs and granting investment aid in industrial production and its priority areas, the districts of the Slovak regions are classified under the Regulation into four zones (A – D) according to their unemployment rate.

The Regulation also simplifies the conditions for obtaining investment aid in the priority areas (e.g., in the areas of autonomous and cooperating industrial robots, artificial intelligence, the Industrial Internet of Things, simulation, big data analytics, cloud and cyber security, etc.).

Further, investors operating in the area of technological centers and shared service centers will be required to pay employees wages that are higher than the average wage in the given district.

Also, investors in industrial production will no longer be required to formally guarantee that they will create a certain number of new jobs, unless applying for a contribution towards newly created jobs.