Slovenia

Whether a short visit needs a visa is settled by Regulation (EU) 2018/1806: Annex I nationals need one to cross the external border, Annex II nationals do not for stays of no more than 90 days in any 180-day period. What makes Slovenia worth reading is that it does not simply point at the Union instrument the way Czechia does. Article 14(2) of ZTuj-2 states the measure itself - 90 days in any period of 180 days, counting every day of stay in the last 180-day window - and article 14(3) restates it again as a Schengen-wide total, so a traveller who has used the allowance in Austria or Croatia has used Slovenia's too. Article 7(1) carries the ordinary duty to hold a valid travel document. The piece that is drafted but not yet working is article 8.a, which requires a travel authorisation under Regulation (EU) 2018/1240 and gives the appeal to the police: ZTuj-2I's article 97(5) says it applies from the date the European Commission sets for ETIAS to begin and publishes in the Official Journal, and the interior minister must then publish that date in the Slovene gazette by decision.

Slovenia put a digital nomad into its Aliens Act rather than into a ministry's practice. Article 51.a of ZTuj-2, inserted by ZTuj-2I and in application since 21 November 2025, issues a temporary residence permit to a non-EU, non-EEA national who works remotely over communications technology for an employer or a civil-law counterparty established outside Slovenia, or who is self-employed abroad. The money test is not the ordinary one every other permit uses: instead of the basic amount of minimum income it asks for twice the average monthly net wage in Slovenia as last published in the gazette, which on the last publication, for July 2026, is 1,695.34 EUR a month and so 3,390.68 EUR a month. The permit is issued for the term of the contract and in no case for more than a year, and article 51.a(5) says it cannot be extended at all: the holder may apply again only six months after it expires. There is no other passive-income route - the purposes in article 35(1) and the categories in article 35(2) are a closed list and living on an income from abroad is on it only as this.

Slovenia has no residence category for a retired person. Article 35(1) of ZTuj-2 lists the purposes for which a temporary permit is issued - employment or work, family reunification, study and training, voluntary service, and other justified reasons recognised by law, treaty or international custom or the interest of the Republic - and article 35(2) adds the categories that get one without a purpose: long-term residents of another member state, people of Slovene descent to the second degree, children of foreign nationals born here, victims of trafficking, of illegal employment and of domestic violence, people allowed to remain, and digital nomads. A pension is on neither list. The nearest thing to an answer is article 51(1), which lets the authority issue a permit for up to one year to someone who shows a justified reason recognised by law, a treaty or international custom - not a category a retiree can rely on. Retirement does appear once in the Act, and it works the other way round: under article 126(3) a Union citizen who stops working in Slovenia and qualifies for an old-age pension under Slovene rules acquires permanent residence before the five years are up.

Work residence in Slovenia is a single document. Article 37 of ZTuj-2 issues an enotno dovoljenje za prebivanje in delo that lets the holder enter, live and work, and it is granted where the applicant meets the conditions every permit shares and where the employment service consents under the Act on the employment of foreign nationals. The first permit runs for the term of the contract and never more than two years; a renewal may run to three. The consent is where the real test sits, and it is a labour-market test with a solvency test attached: article 17(1) of ZZSDT asks that there be no suitable unemployed person on the register, that the employer be properly registered, not in liquidation or bankruptcy, and actively trading - which means either a full-time employee insured for six months, or the employer insured as a sole trader for six months, or receipts of at least 10,000 EUR in each of the last six months into a Slovene account - that the employer's withholding returns be filed and its tax paid, that the quota not be used up, and that a signed contract of employment be attached. ZZSDT-E added a ninth condition in 2025: no dismissals for business reasons in the last six months, waived if the employer pays at least last year's average gross wage. An employer registered for less than six months may qualify instead by having invested at least 50,000 EUR, and a graduate-level applicant escapes the trading test altogether.

There is no route into Slovenia by investing. The purposes in article 35(1) of ZTuj-2 and the categories in article 35(2) are both closed lists, and neither has an investor, an entrepreneur or a holder of government bonds on it. A person who wants to run a business here has two doors, and both are slow. Article 37.b of ZTuj-2 issues a single permit for work as a self-employed person, but only after a year of continuous lawful residence unless the applicant is already entered in the business register as carrying on an independent profession, and article 15(2) of ZZSDT says the same in the employment statute. The only capital figure anywhere in the scheme is in article 17(2) of ZZSDT, and it is a condition on an employer rather than on a migrant: a company registered for less than six months can satisfy the active-trading test by having invested at least 50,000 EUR in the activity the worker will be employed in. That is a solvency proxy for hiring, not a residence right for the person who put the money in.

Article 44 of ZTuj-2 issues a temporary residence permit for study to someone admitted to a publicly recognised education or study programme, taking part in an international exchange at a recognised provider, or in a training programme run by a state-authorised organisation. The means test is the ordinary one - at least the basic amount of minimum income each month, 507.43 EUR from 1 March 2026 - but the proof is unusually relaxed: funds the educational organisation gives the student count, and so does a written statement from the parents that they will support the student, where the law of the student's own nationality obliges them to. The permit is issued for the length of the study and never for more than one year, and it is renewed a year at a time. The school may lodge the application itself and may act in the procedure, though the permit must be served on the student. Applications for study permits are handled as a priority. The sting is in article 52(1): time spent on a study permit counts only half towards the five years for permanent residence.

Slovenia answers the ancestry question twice, with two different reaches. For residence, article 48(7) of ZTuj-2 issues a temporary permit to a foreign national of Slovene descent to the second degree in the direct line, and asks for nothing beyond the conditions every permit shares in article 33(3): a travel document, health insurance and means. No job, no study place, no sponsor. Article 48(8) lets someone already here lawfully apply inside Slovenia, and article 52(3) lets a person of Slovene descent have permanent residence before the five years are up. Article 47(1) lets them bring family immediately, without the year of prior residence other permit holders serve. For citizenship the reach is longer and the conditions are different in a way that matters more than the degree: article 12(1) of ZDRS lets the authority naturalise a Slovene emigrant and their descendant to the fourth degree in the direct line after one year of actually living in Slovenia with regularised status, and the conditions it imports from article 10 deliberately leave out point 2 - release from the existing citizenship. An ordinary applicant has to give up their old nationality. A descendant of an emigrant does not.

Family reunification in Slovenia is a right of the sponsor rather than of the spouse, and it is earned. Article 47(1) of ZTuj-2 gives the right to a foreign national with permanent residence, and to one who has lived here for the last year on a temporary permit issued with a validity of at least a year. Seasonal workers and daily cross-border commuters are excluded outright. A short list of holders may reunite with no waiting at all: EU Blue Card holders, researchers, intra-corporate transferees, people whose residence is in the interest of the Republic, digital nomads, people of Slovene descent under article 48, and people who were on temporary protection immediately before. Family member is defined in article 47(3) and includes a partner in a registered or long-term de facto union, which is wider than many of its neighbours. The sponsor must show means for the family members, not below the level that gives entitlement to social assistance. The condition that catches people out is in the same paragraph: on renewal, an adult family member must show Slovene at survival level. Marriage reaches citizenship separately and slowly - article 12(3) of ZDRS asks for three years of marriage to a Slovene citizen and one year of actually living here, and unlike the descent route it does require release from the existing citizenship.

Chapter XIII of ZTuj-2, articles 117 to 140, carries free movement. A Union citizen needs no entry permission at all and travels on an identity card or a passport; entry may be refused only for a missing document, a subsisting entry ban, or a serious and genuine threat to public order, security or public health, and public health is defined by reference to the World Health Organization's international health regulations. Ninety days may be spent without registering; beyond that the citizen must register at any administrative unit before the ninety days are up. Registration is granted on the ground of work, self-employment, service provision, job-seeking, study, or being a family member - and in every other case on means not below the social assistance level and health insurance. After five years of continuous lawful residence the right to permanent residence arises, and article 126(2) is unusually explicit about what does not break the five years: absences of up to six months a year, one absence of up to twelve consecutive months for pregnancy, birth, serious illness, study, vocational training or a posting, and military service. Chapter XIII.A, articles 141.a to 141.l, is a separate scheme for British citizens and their family members covered by the Withdrawal Agreement, down to a certificate of frontier worker rights.

Article 10 of ZDRS does not give anyone a right to be naturalised. It says the competent authority may, at its own discretion, admit an applicant to citizenship where that accords with the national interest, and then lists ten conditions the applicant must meet anyway: being 18; holding a release from the existing citizenship or showing one will follow; actually living in Slovenia for ten years, the last five of them unbroken, with regularised foreign-national status; secured means giving material and social security to the applicant and their dependants; command of Slovene for everyday communication, proved by a certificate at basic level; no final sentence of unconditional imprisonment longer than three months and no suspended sentence with a probation period longer than a year; no expulsion order; that admission would not endanger public order, security or the defence of the state; settled tax obligations; and an oath to respect the free democratic constitutional order founded on the Constitution. The release is deemed met for a stateless applicant, where the applicant's own law takes the old citizenship away on naturalisation, or where the former state does not decide in a reasonable time - which the Act then defines. A citizen of another member state need not prove it at all where reciprocity exists. Shorter routes exist for Slovene emigrants and their descendants, for people who lost Slovene citizenship by release, for spouses, and where the state benefits for scientific, economic, cultural or national reasons.

Article 6 of ZDoh-2 makes a person resident in Slovenia at any time in a tax year if they meet any one of six tests, and the first of them is purely administrative: an officially registered permanent address in Slovenia. Four of the six are about public service abroad - diplomatic and consular posts, Slovene public servants in technical or administrative functions, staff of the Union institutions, the European Central Bank, the European Investment Bank and the European Investment Fund, and members of the European Parliament. The two that catch ordinary people are point 5, a usual abode or the centre of personal and economic interests in Slovenia, and point 6, presence in Slovenia for more than 183 days in total at any time in the tax year. Article 7 then declares certain people non-resident regardless, and one of its limbs is a genuine planning provision: a person who will live in Slovenia solely to work as a foreign expert in a field where there is not enough suitable local staff, who has not been resident at any time in the five years before arrival, who owns no property here, and who will be in Slovenia for fewer than 365 days in two consecutive tax years.

Slovenia runs a single compulsory health insurance scheme and article 15(1) of ZZVZZ lists twenty-five categories of insured person. Reading it against a residence permit is the useful exercise, because the list is built around work and around stalno prebivališče - a registered permanent address - rather than around lawful residence. Employment in Slovenia insures you (point 1); so does self-employment as a sole or main occupation (point 5), being a company director in that capacity (point 6), and being a foreign national educating or training here (point 14). Point 20 is the residual: a person with a registered permanent address who meets none of the other points and pays the contribution themselves. Everyone in the scheme also pays a flat obvezni zdravstveni prispevek on top of the ordinary contributions - 35 EUR in the Act, adjusted each 1 March by the health minister and published in the gazette, and 39.36 EUR from 1 March 2026. Until an entitlement exists, the bridge is the insurance every residence permit requires: article 33(3) of ZTuj-2 asks for cover of at least emergency services, and a long-stay visa applicant needs travel insurance of at least 30,000 EUR. Article 7 of ZZVZZ puts urgent treatment of foreign nationals from states with no agreement on the state budget.

Article 66(1) of ZVoz-1 lets a foreign national who has a usual residence in Slovenia and a registered address on the strength of a residence permit drive on a valid foreign licence, subject to reciprocity, for one year from the day the address was registered. Article 66(2) gives a Slovene citizen returning from abroad two years on the same facts, which is a distinction most countries do not draw. Licences issued by another member state, Liechtenstein, Norway or Iceland are outside all of that: article 66(5) lets the holder drive what the licence allows, with no clock. Exchange is article 67. A holder of a valid foreign licence with a usual residence here may ask for a Slovene one, but article 67(3) makes the Slovene licence conditional on passing the practical part of the driving test for the categories concerned. Article 67(6) is the exception that matters: the transport minister may by rulebook list the countries whose holders need not take it, on an assessment of the quality of their training and road safety. A licence not compliant with the Vienna Convention has to be carried with an international driving permit, an international permit cannot be exchanged at all, and the foreign licence is handed in and returned to the authority that issued it.

Article 181 of ZPlaSSIED gives a consumer a right to a basic payment account and ties it to lawful residence in the European Union rather than to residence in Slovenia. The right belongs expressly to a consumer without a fixed address, to an asylum seeker, and to a person refused a residence permit whose removal is not possible in law or in fact, and article 181(3) adds that it applies regardless of where the consumer's permanent residence is. Every bank that keeps consumer payment accounts must offer one. The bank must design the procedure so that exercising the right is not too difficult or burdensome, and must open the account without undue delay and in any event within ten working days of a complete application - the same ten days apply to a refusal. A refusal is mandatory where opening the account would breach the anti-money-laundering statute because the bank cannot complete customer due diligence, and permitted where the consumer already has an account at a Slovene bank giving access to the same services, or has breached a contractual obligation to that bank within three years. Article 183 lets the bank charge only a reasonable fee or nothing, and makes Banka Slovenije set how that fee is calculated.

Slovenia does not decide this. Personal property imported by someone transferring their normal residence from a third country into the customs territory of the Union enters free of import duties on conditions set by a directly applicable Union regulation: possession for at least six months before the move and, for non-consumable goods, use at the former residence; a continuous twelve months of normal residence outside the customs territory; and entry for free circulation within twelve months of establishing the new residence. Alcohol, tobacco, commercial means of transport and articles for use in a trade or profession other than portable instruments of the applied or liberal arts get no relief at all.