Slovakian law considers a situation where an offense is less serious than a crime to be an administrative offence (in Slovak: priestupok or iný správny delikt). In certain situations, administrative liability can be applied in cases of hate speech.
Delicts of extremism
In Slovakia, the Act on Minor Offences establishes a special category of “delicts of extremism”. These are minor administrative offences against property, health or dignity committed with a biased motive inciting hatred towards an individual or a group due to the victim’s race, colour, nationality, ethnic affiliation, gender or religion. Committing an offence with such motivation may be considered to have aggravating circumstances. As a minor offence of extremism can be qualified also the dissemination in public of materials (texts, photographs, leaflets, audio- or video recordings) inciting hatred towards individuals or groups of individuals on the grounds of their race, colour, nationality, ethnic affiliation, gender or religion; as well as dissemination of materials inciting to violation or denigration of fundamental rights and freedoms. According to the Slovak law, the perpetrators of these offences can be imposed by a fine by the Police or the district state administration authority.
Read more about the differences between hate crimes and hate speech.
Read more about the right to a fair trial in administrative offences proceedings.
Request for compensation during trial
You can request compensation from the perpetrator of the administrative offence directly within an administrative offence proceedings. However, an administrative body has no competence to decide finally on an amount of damage, if a perpetrator dismiss it. In such a case it is necessary to request compensation for damage by lodging a civil claim, as set out in the Code of Civil Adversarial Proceeding.
Read more about civil claims and civil liability.