Slovakia

French presence

• French community in Slovakia: 897 people registered (April 2023)
• Slovak community in France: 8,500 registered in 2018 (10,000 estimated)

Visits

President Macron visited Bratislava on 26 October 2018 and President Zuzana Čaputová visited Paris on 24 July 2019. President Macron returned to Bratislava on 31 May 2023 and gave an important speech at the GLOBSEC Bratislava Forum on the relations between France and Central Europe and on European Union enlargement. During that visit, the President was received by President Čaputová and Prime Minister Ľudovít Ódor.

There has been much contact and many visits between ministers in recent years including visits to Paris by the Slovak Defence and Justice Ministers in October 2021 and the visit to Bratislava by the French Minister of State for Europe, Laurence Boone, in November 2022.

Ambassadors

• French Ambassador to Slovakia: Pascal Le Deunff (since September 2021)
• Ambassador of Slovakia to France: Ján Šoth (since September 2023)

Cultural, scientific and technical cooperation

Educational and linguistic cooperation is based on a network comprising the Institut Français in Bratislava; two branches of the Alliance Française in Košice and Banská Bystrica; and 17 French language assistants. There are four Franco-Slovak bilingual sections, which were recently awarded the “FrancEducation” label, with around 700 pupils, in top secondary schools in Bratislava, Banská Bystrica, Košice and Trenčin. The French school in Bratislava is accredited with the local school system and offers double certification with the French Baccalaureate and the Slovak Maturita.

An arrangement on educational, linguistic, academic and scientific cooperation for the period 2016-2019 was signed on 22 November 2016 and was renewed on 7 December 2020.

Slovakia has been an observer member of the International Organisation of La Francophonie (OIF) since 2002.