There are 140,000 job vacancies in Slovakia, and anyone seeking employment can find work either independently or with the assistance of the relevant labour office, Prime Minister Robert Fico declared on Tuesday.
Fico spoke in response to the criticism of the government's economic policy and mass layoffs by the opposition's Progressive Slovakia (PS) party. The Prime Minister accused PS of "literally celebrating" the planned dismissal of 77 employees at a company near Nove Mesto nad Vahom without verifying the facts and placing full responsibility on the government.
According to the Prime Minister, the employer has known since May that production is to end but has failed to fulfil its legal obligation to notify the labour office of the planned mass layoffs. He added that the company's Italian management visited the plant in May, dismissed the Slovak management team and handed responsibility for running the business to a human resources employee. Fico pointed out that there are more than 2,000 job vacancies in the Nove Mesto nad Vahom district alone.
Fico also rejected claims that the company's difficulties emerged this year or last year. He said the business employed around 350 to 400 people in 2019, when there was no financial transaction tax, and has been steadily reducing its workforce to only several dozen employees while repeatedly stating its plans to close its Potvorice plant.
The Prime Minister said the company had also faced problems abroad, having previously closed operations in Italy and come under significant pressure from customers to relocate production to China. He said the company’s founder confirmed this during a strike by Italian employees in July 2024, when workers were affected by reduced working hours because of falling orders. According to Fico, the company has experienced the same decline in Slovakia, with revenue dropping from €42.5 million in 2022 to €17.5 million in 2025.
MP Simona Petrik (PS) claimed that labour offices were notified of 47 cases of collective dismissals in the first half of 2026, putting more than 4,400 jobs at risk. Fellow MP Stefan Kišš (PS) added that several companies were instead been reducing staff gradually, meaning those losses were not reflected in the official statistics. In July alone, Turkish company Mata Automotive Slovakia announced a plan to cease operations in the Velky Krtis district, affecting 119 employees, while Italy's Askoll Group is slated to close its plant in the Nove Mesto nad Vahom.
The company in Nove Mesto nad Vahom said the direct reasons for ending production in Slovakia are the current government's fiscal consolidation measures, including the financial transaction tax, a three-percentage-point increase in corporate income tax and a one-percentage-point rise in employees' health insurance contributions. Petrik argued that such measures have made Slovak companies uncompetitive, encouraging businesses to relocate to countries with lower taxes and social contributions, with thousands of workers ultimately losing their jobs.
Kišš said the burden of fiscal consolidation was falling most heavily on Slovakia's regions. He cited Kezmarok, where unemployment stands at 12 percent and German company Mubea announced in June its plan to end production there and dismiss all 120 employees by the end of the year.
Analysts at the Slovak Central Bank (NBS) said last week that a record number of people entered labour office registers in June following mass layoffs, particularly in western Slovakia. UniCredit Bank analyst Lubomir Korsnak said in a commentary on June unemployment data that more extensive layoffs in some sectors and regions will continue to push the unemployment rate temporarily higher, as seen in June. He added that part of the increase could become long-term, keeping unemployment systematically above the record lows recorded in the spring of last year.
Source: TASR
