Housing foreign workers in Slovakia: residence reporting and provider duties

Anyone who accommodates a foreign national in Slovakia carries three duties under Section 113 of Act No. 404/2011 Coll. on the residence of foreigners: verify identity from a travel document or another identity document, enter the person in the guest book, and deliver the official residence report form to the competent police unit within 5 days of accommodation.

The three duties under Section 113

An accommodation provider is anyone who provides lodging, whether for payment or free of charge. An employer renting a workers' hostel or a flat for third country nationals is an accommodation provider even when lodging is not its business and even when it charges the worker nothing. The duties start on the day of accommodation, not on the first day of work.

The first duty is identity verification. The law requires it from the travel document or another identity document. A verbal statement from the worker is not verification, and a photo of a passport on a supervisor's phone is not a record.

The second is the guest book. Under Section 113 letter b) it carries the foreign national's given name, surname, nationality and date of birth, together with the period of accommodation. It is kept as events happen, which means the entry belongs to the date of accommodation and not to the date an inspector asks for the book.

The third is the report itself. Under Section 113 letter c) the official residence report form goes to the police unit within 5 days of accommodation. The Ministry of the Interior also accepts submission through the electronic service set up for this purpose, which is faster than a counter visit when several workers arrive in the same week. The period is in calendar days and starts on the day the worker moves in.

Accommodation as a condition of residence

Accommodation enters the procedure before anyone moves in. MPSVR SR requires the employer or the host organisation to evidence that accommodation is arranged during the permit procedure itself. The Migration Information Centre of IOM adds the practical condition that sinks the most files: proof of accommodation must not be older than 90 days when the residence application is lodged.

Those 90 days are the reason accommodation cannot be the first item settled. An employer who signs a lease in January and lodges the application in May attaches a document the office treats as expired, and the file comes back for completion. The sequence that works runs the other way: finish the other supporting documents, then obtain fresh proof of accommodation, then lodge. The same logic governs the whole relocation and is set out in the guide to the relocation logistics chain.

For seasonal arrivals the condition repeats for every rotation, because the seasonal regime assumes employer provided housing. The ceiling those rotations run against is covered in the guide to seasonal employment in Slovakia.

Where it actually goes wrong

The failures here are administrative rather than structural. The first is a change of address during the stay. Moving a worker from one hostel to another is new accommodation, so it needs a new guest book entry and a new report within 5 days. Employers who shift crews between sites according to contracts skip this routinely, even though the form is the same one.

The second is split responsibility. Where an agency or a landlord provides the housing, that party is the accommodation provider. The employer is not relieved of its own duty to evidence accommodation in the residence procedure. Asking the landlord for a copy of the filed report and keeping it in the worker's file is the cheap fix. How responsibility divides between an employer and an intermediary is described in the employer compliance chain.

The third is a guest book written up after the fact. An inspection compares entry dates against start dates and against the reports held by the police unit, and three records of the same worker carrying three different dates are visible immediately.

Keeping this tidy costs one book or one spreadsheet and five minutes per arrival. An employer who writes the guest book as people move in, files a copy of every report with the worker's documents, and obtains proof of accommodation only in the final month before lodging, spends very little time on this subject during an inspection. How we run this administration on each corridor is described on the employers page.