OECD Development Co‑operation Peer Reviews: Slovak Republic 2025

Annex A. Progress since the 2019 DAC peer review recommendations

Towards a whole-of-government, coherent development approach

2019 Peer Review Recommendations	Progress
The Slovak Republic should ensure that its next mid-term strategy is recognised as the framework for all development co-operation efforts across government and re-affirms the role of the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs (MFEA) as the national co-ordinator of development co-operation.	Partially implemented The 2025-30 medium-term strategy assigns responsibility to the MFEA to convene the Coordination Committee. As a legal instrument, the Coordination Committee and its working groups were created to co-ordinate the development of policies. In practice, the Committee elaborates the annual bilateral ODA plan based on various ministries’ ODA budgets, but does not serve as a platform for discussions on a whole-of-government approach to development co‑operation, or forge synergies across government priorities (environment, climate) or issues related to education (scholarships, global education, etc.).
The Slovak Republic should improve the links between its development co-operation and its foreign policy priorities for promoting peace and security.	Partially implemented The Slovak Republic’s active roles in the OSCE since 2019 demonstrate its commitment to security in Europe. For example, it assumed the role of Special Representative of the OSCE Presidency and Project Co‑ordinator for Ukraine in 2023‑24. From 2022-23, Ukraine was also the largest recipient of the Slovak Republic’s development and humanitarian assistance. In addition, the Middle East remains a priority region in the 2025‑30 medium-term strategy, with a focus on stabilisation and conflict prevention through efforts addressing the root causes of migration. In Afghanistan, increasing fragility led to a gradual reduction in co‑operation projects until their complete discontinuation in 2021.

Vision and policies for development co‑operation

2019 Peer Review Recommendations	Progress
As an overarching policy statement, the mid-term strategy should: make a clear link between the Slovak Republic’s development co-operation programme and the government’s long-term Development Strategy until 2030, as well as the National Investment Plan explain clearly the Slovak Republic’s comparative advantage identify the principles and standards, including on poverty reduction and cross-cutting issues, to be applied through all channels of Slovak development co-operation.	Partially implemented Both the 2019-23 and 2025‑30 medium-term strategies clearly link the Slovak Republic’s development co‑operation objectives to the SDGs, but do not explicitly refer to the Slovak Vision and Development Strategy until 2030. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister promotes policy coherence in decision making but has not to date considered effects on developing countries. The 2019-23 strategy stresses the need to initiate processes to identify the Slovak Republic’s comparative advantage; the 2025‑30 strategy identified the “GREEN” programme as a new thematic focus to help define areas of comparative advantage. SAIDC provides technical guidance and training to support practical application of the two cross-cutting themes, gender and environment, across different bilateral programmes.
The Slovak Republic should develop a limited number of strategies – notably for private sector partnerships and humanitarian assistance – to clarify and strengthen the implementation of its policy.	Not implemented The 2025-30 medium-term strategy includes separate sections on involving the private sector in development co‑operation and on humanitarian aid, but since the last peer review there have not been any stand-alone strategies to guide implementation across government.

Aid volume and allocation

2019 Peer Review Recommendations	Progress
The Slovak Republic should produce a plan for meeting and monitoring its commitment to devote 0.33% of its national income to ODA by 2030.	Not implemented The 2025‑30 medium-term strategy reconfirms the commitment to devote 0.33% of national income to ODA by 2030, but there is no binding plan. Increases in ODA in 2020 and 2022 were of a non-systematic nature (relative to COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine). The ODA/GNI ratio has remained around 0.14% since 2020.

Organisation and management capacity

2019 Peer Review Recommendations	Progress
The Slovak Republic should match the growth in its ODA budget with human resources both in Bratislava and in key embassies.	Not implemented The number of staff working exclusively on development co‑operation has decreased since the 2019 peer review, dropping to 33 full-time staff in 2025. The Slovak Republic maintains three development diplomat positions in embassies abroad.
The Slovak Republic should reinforce its systems to allow for external oversight of its programmes and policies, including independent evaluation.	Fully implemented The Slovak Republic has carried out four external evaluations since 2020: the 2019‑23 medium-term strategy (2024); the project grants to CSOs in Moldova (2023); a mid-term evaluation of the 2019‑23 medium-term strategy (2021); and global development education projects (2020). In 2020, SAIDC passed the EU Pillar Assessment, becoming eligible to engage in EU delegated co‑operation. The process was concluded in March 2025 with the successful evaluation of the procurement pillar.

Development co‑operation delivery and partnerships

2019 Peer Review Recommendations	Progress
The Slovak Republic should strengthen transparency by publishing the criteria it uses to select its multilateral partners.	Fully implemented The 2025-30 medium-term strategy includes criteria for the selection of multilateral partners, such as: alignment with the Slovak Republic’s foreign policy priorities and the sectoral and geographical priorities of its ODA; international development (specifically citing humanitarian crises, climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss, migration and the refugee crisis); in-country presence and performance of the multilateral partner, based on MOPAN assessments; the benefits to the Slovak Republic in terms of national capacity building, or the possibility of involving Slovak entities and experts in the implementation of programmes and projects; and, finally, the visibility of SlovakAid. The most recent “Comprehensive Assessment of the Effectiveness of the Slovak Republic’s Membership in International Organisations and Related Financial Aspects (2018-2021)” was published in 2022, covering the period 2018 to 2021.
The Slovak Republic should review legal requirements that restrict grants to Slovak entities in order to make further progress on untying its ODA in line with its international commitments.	Not implemented The legal requirement to award ODA grants to Slovak entities remains in place. The government considers that the transaction cost for open calls would be too high compared to its small bilateral co‑operation budget and given the current political climate. In 2023, 43% of total bilateral commitments were untied, compared to 13% in 2022 and 41% in 2021. In 2022 and 2023, the largest tied aid commitments related to in-kind vaccine donations, in-kind humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, scholarships, and IT equipment and vocational training in Kenya.
The Slovak Republic should identify countries for prioritising a bilateral relationship and develop country strategies to deliver a set of measurable, time-bound results based on partner country priorities.	Partially implemented Both the 2019-23 and 2025-30 medium-term strategies identify Georgia, Kenya and Moldova as priority partners (“programme countries”). In 2021, the Slovak Republic adopted Country Strategy Papers outlining principles, objectives and priorities, but they lack a results framework.
The Slovak Republic should develop modalities for providing partners with predictable finance as part of longer-term and strategic partnership arrangements, including for humanitarian work.	Partially implemented Two strategic partnerships were initiated for the digitalisation of schools in Kenya (2022) and sustainable agriculture in Moldova (2023). Both projects were selected through dedicated calls for proposals and will be implemented over a period of five years. The recent shift in budgeting rules provides an opportunity to strengthen forward-looking planning and budgeting, thereby enhancing predictability of funding for partners outside the strategic partnerships.

Results and accountability

2019 Peer Review Recommendations	Progress
The Slovak Republic should develop common appraisal, monitoring and reporting tools for use across government in order to ensure consistent implementation of the mid-term strategy.	Not implemented The 2014 evaluation strategy and methodology remain the same. Common project appraisal, monitoring and reporting tools across government are not yet in place beyond the MFEA’s consolidation of data from different ministries and entities that it reports to the DAC. This is an area where the MFEA can help promote a common understanding of monitoring and evaluation tools and a light-touch common results framework linked to the medium-term strategy.
The Slovak Republic should introduce results-based management to ensure all strategies and interventions pursue a set of stated development results.	Partially implemented An existing plan to introduce a more results-oriented approach to SlovakAid could be progressively rolled out for some of the strategic partnerships the MFEA has piloted (based on the forthcoming logframe that will align to the medium-term strategy). This will require dedicated human resources. Given the large share of multilateral ODA, communicating about the Slovak Republic’s contributions to results achieved by multilateral partners will be important.