Country-wide policy
Five Years Buys You the Right to Sit an Exam: Permanent Residence Requires Slovene at A2, and the Years Are Not All Counted the Same
Article 52(1) of ZTuj-2 issues a permanent residence permit after five years of continuous lawful residence on a temporary permit, and adds a condition that is easy to miss in the length of the paragraph: command of Slovene at basic level, proved by a certificate of a passed examination at basic level, which the Act itself glosses as A2 of the Common European Framework. The examination has written, oral and listening parts and is run by institutions delivering the publicly recognised programme Slovene as a second and foreign language. The condition is deemed met by admission to a Slovene-language programme of recognised education here, by schooling completed here at any level, by schooling in Slovene in the areas of the autochthonous Slovene minority in neighbouring states, and by being over 60 or under 18. It does not apply at all to anyone who may have permanent residence before the five years - which includes people of Slovene descent. The five years themselves are counted unevenly: study and vocational training count half, seasonal work, posted work, intra-corporate transfer and daily commuting do not count at all, and absences break the period if they run six consecutive months or ten months in total.
Topics it changes
- Residency on passive income
- Residency through work
- Residency through marriage
- Residency as a student
- Residency through ancestry
- Becoming a citizen
What it requires
- Five years of continuous lawful residence on a temporary permit
- A certificate of a passed Slovene examination at basic level, A2 of the Common European Framework
- That absences have not run six consecutive months, nor ten months in total
At a glance
- Language level
- Slovene at basic level, A2 of the Common European Framework
Article 52(1) of ZTuj-2, which names the level in brackets inside the provision.
- Who is exempt
- People schooled in Slovene, those over 60 or under 18, and anyone eligible before the five years
Article 52(1) of ZTuj-2 lists them; the last limb takes in people of Slovene descent under article 52(3).
- Study years
- Counted half
Article 52(1) of ZTuj-2.
- Seasonal, posted and commuting years
- Not counted at all
Article 52(1) of ZTuj-2, which also excludes time as a person transferred within a corporate group.
- Absences that break the five years
- Six consecutive months, or ten months in total
Article 52(1) of ZTuj-2; a posting abroad by a Slovene employer is excepted from both limits.
- The citizenship comparison
- Ten years, the last five unbroken
Point 3 of article 10(1) of ZDRS, which is a different and longer clock.
What the law says
«Dovoljenje za stalno prebivanje se lahko izda tujcu, ki pet let neprekinjeno zakonito prebiva v Republiki Sloveniji na podlagi dovoljenja za začasno prebivanje ali potrdila o vloženi prošnji za podaljšanje ali izdajo nadaljnjega dovoljenja za začasno prebivanje ali potrdila o vloženi prošnji za izdajo prvega dovoljenja za začasno prebivanje, ki tujcu v času odločanja o njegovi prošnji za izdajo prvega dovoljenja za začasno prebivanje dovoljuje prebivanje v Republiki Sloveniji, in ki izpolnjuje druge pogoje za izdajo dovoljenja, določene s tem zakonom, ter izpolnjuje pogoj znanja iz slovenskega jezika na osnovni ravni, kar dokaže s spričevalom o uspešno opravljenem izpitu iz znanja slovenščine na osnovni ravni (A2 Skupnega evropskega jezikovnega okvira), in če ni razlogov za zavrnitev izdaje dovoljenja iz 55. člena tega zakona.»The five years and the language condition, in the opening sentence of the paragraph.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The official gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, where an instrument gains force. Every Act, amending Act, government decree, ministerial rulebook and Constitutional Court decision is published here, and so is the uradno prečiščeno besedilo - the official consolidated text, which the National Assembly confirms by resolution under article 153 of its own rules of procedure and which then appears as a numbered item of a numbered issue. Two address shapes serve the same material and both answer an ordinary request without JavaScript. /glasilo-uradni-list-rs/vsebina/{YYYY}-01-{NNNN} is the item, where the number is the SOP identifier the state legal information system also uses, so an identifier found there resolves straight to the gazette text; a human-readable slug may follow the identifier and is optional. /_pdf/{YYYY}/Ur/u{YYYY}{NNN}.pdf is the whole issue as a PDF. From 1 March 2026 the gazette is published through pisrs.si instead, and single items from the new arrangement are served at https://pisrs.si/api/uradni-list/objava/u{YYYY}{NNNN}.pdf as one-item PDFs with a text layer. Readings for this corpus were taken directly rather than through the extraction service, because the item pages are ordinary HTML and the service adds nothing.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: **It issues; it does not maintain.** The gazette prints an instrument as it was published on the day and never updates it, so an amending Act and the Act it amends are two separate items and neither tells you what the law now says. The only current text of an Act is an official consolidation, and those are made when the National Assembly decides to make one: for the Aliens Act that is ZTuj-2-UPB15 of 24 June 2025 and current, but for the Citizenship Act it is ZDRS-UPB2 of 20 March 2007 and ten years behind ZDRS-E, for the Income Tax Act it is ZDoh-2-UPB7 of 28 February 2011, for the Health Care and Health Insurance Act ZZVZZ-UPB3 of 11 July 2006, and for the Act on employment of foreign nationals ZZSDT-UPB4 of 7 June 2021 with two amending Acts after it. **Never cite an official consolidation as the law in force without checking the amending Acts published since it**, and never treat the absence of a later consolidation as evidence that nothing changed. The site also prints, on every item page, that what it shows is archival under article 33 of the Act on the Official Gazette and that issues published after 28 February 2026 are on PISRS: "Prikazana vsebina je v skladu s 33. členom ZoUL arhivska. Izdaje uradnega lista, izdane po 28.2.2026, so dostopne na PISRS". It cannot be cited for anything published after that date.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
«Čas prebivanja tujca v Republiki Sloveniji na podlagi dovoljenja za začasno prebivanje zaradi študija in poklicnega usposabljanja se v obdobje za izdajo dovoljenja za stalno prebivanje šteje polovično. Čas prebivanja tujca v Republiki Sloveniji na podlagi dovoljenja za začasno prebivanje zaradi sezonskega dela, kot napoteni delavec, kot oseba, premeščena znotraj gospodarske družbe, ali kot dnevni delovni migrant se ne všteje v obdobje za izdajo dovoljenja za stalno prebivanje. Čas, ki ga je tujec prebil na prestajanju kazni, se ne šteje v čas, potreben za izdajo dovoljenja za stalno prebivanje.»The uneven counting, which is in the same paragraph some way below.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The official gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, where an instrument gains force. Every Act, amending Act, government decree, ministerial rulebook and Constitutional Court decision is published here, and so is the uradno prečiščeno besedilo - the official consolidated text, which the National Assembly confirms by resolution under article 153 of its own rules of procedure and which then appears as a numbered item of a numbered issue. Two address shapes serve the same material and both answer an ordinary request without JavaScript. /glasilo-uradni-list-rs/vsebina/{YYYY}-01-{NNNN} is the item, where the number is the SOP identifier the state legal information system also uses, so an identifier found there resolves straight to the gazette text; a human-readable slug may follow the identifier and is optional. /_pdf/{YYYY}/Ur/u{YYYY}{NNN}.pdf is the whole issue as a PDF. From 1 March 2026 the gazette is published through pisrs.si instead, and single items from the new arrangement are served at https://pisrs.si/api/uradni-list/objava/u{YYYY}{NNNN}.pdf as one-item PDFs with a text layer. Readings for this corpus were taken directly rather than through the extraction service, because the item pages are ordinary HTML and the service adds nothing.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: **It issues; it does not maintain.** The gazette prints an instrument as it was published on the day and never updates it, so an amending Act and the Act it amends are two separate items and neither tells you what the law now says. The only current text of an Act is an official consolidation, and those are made when the National Assembly decides to make one: for the Aliens Act that is ZTuj-2-UPB15 of 24 June 2025 and current, but for the Citizenship Act it is ZDRS-UPB2 of 20 March 2007 and ten years behind ZDRS-E, for the Income Tax Act it is ZDoh-2-UPB7 of 28 February 2011, for the Health Care and Health Insurance Act ZZVZZ-UPB3 of 11 July 2006, and for the Act on employment of foreign nationals ZZSDT-UPB4 of 7 June 2021 with two amending Acts after it. **Never cite an official consolidation as the law in force without checking the amending Acts published since it**, and never treat the absence of a later consolidation as evidence that nothing changed. The site also prints, on every item page, that what it shows is archival under article 33 of the Act on the Official Gazette and that issues published after 28 February 2026 are on PISRS: "Prikazana vsebina je v skladu s 33. členom ZoUL arhivska. Izdaje uradnega lista, izdane po 28.2.2026, so dostopne na PISRS". It cannot be cited for anything published after that date.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
«Tujcu, katerega prebivanje v Republiki Sloveniji je v interesu Republike Slovenije, o čemer organ, pristojen za izdajo dovoljenja, odloči na podlagi mnenja pristojnega ministrstva oziroma drugega državnega organa, ali tujcu, ki je slovenskega rodu, se lahko izda dovoljenje za stalno prebivanje tudi pred iztekom roka iz prvega odstavka tega člena.»Who gets there early, and therefore who never sits the examination.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The official gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, where an instrument gains force. Every Act, amending Act, government decree, ministerial rulebook and Constitutional Court decision is published here, and so is the uradno prečiščeno besedilo - the official consolidated text, which the National Assembly confirms by resolution under article 153 of its own rules of procedure and which then appears as a numbered item of a numbered issue. Two address shapes serve the same material and both answer an ordinary request without JavaScript. /glasilo-uradni-list-rs/vsebina/{YYYY}-01-{NNNN} is the item, where the number is the SOP identifier the state legal information system also uses, so an identifier found there resolves straight to the gazette text; a human-readable slug may follow the identifier and is optional. /_pdf/{YYYY}/Ur/u{YYYY}{NNN}.pdf is the whole issue as a PDF. From 1 March 2026 the gazette is published through pisrs.si instead, and single items from the new arrangement are served at https://pisrs.si/api/uradni-list/objava/u{YYYY}{NNNN}.pdf as one-item PDFs with a text layer. Readings for this corpus were taken directly rather than through the extraction service, because the item pages are ordinary HTML and the service adds nothing.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: **It issues; it does not maintain.** The gazette prints an instrument as it was published on the day and never updates it, so an amending Act and the Act it amends are two separate items and neither tells you what the law now says. The only current text of an Act is an official consolidation, and those are made when the National Assembly decides to make one: for the Aliens Act that is ZTuj-2-UPB15 of 24 June 2025 and current, but for the Citizenship Act it is ZDRS-UPB2 of 20 March 2007 and ten years behind ZDRS-E, for the Income Tax Act it is ZDoh-2-UPB7 of 28 February 2011, for the Health Care and Health Insurance Act ZZVZZ-UPB3 of 11 July 2006, and for the Act on employment of foreign nationals ZZSDT-UPB4 of 7 June 2021 with two amending Acts after it. **Never cite an official consolidation as the law in force without checking the amending Acts published since it**, and never treat the absence of a later consolidation as evidence that nothing changed. The site also prints, on every item page, that what it shows is archival under article 33 of the Act on the Official Gazette and that issues published after 28 February 2026 are on PISRS: "Prikazana vsebina je v skladu s 33. členom ZoUL arhivska. Izdaje uradnega lista, izdane po 28.2.2026, so dostopne na PISRS". It cannot be cited for anything published after that date.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
Practical notes
Read off article 52 of ZTuj-2 as officially consolidated on 18 June 2025.
Article 52 was amended by ZTuj-2I and the amended text applies from 21 July 2025, two months after that Act came into force, under article 97(1) of ZTuj-2I.
Czechia asks for Czech at A2 for permanent residence too, so the level is not the difference between them. The difference is the counting: Slovenia halves study years and discounts posted and seasonal work entirely.