Electronic Signature of a Foreign Guest When Reporting a Stay in Slovakia

What the law says

Under § 113 of Act No. 404/2011 Coll. on the Residence of Foreigners, an accommodation provider has several obligations when accommodating a foreigner, among others to:

• verify their identity,
• enter the necessary data in the guest register (kniha ubytovaných),
• ensure the official form for the report of the foreigner’s stay is completed,
• deliver it to the police unit within five days (calendar days) of accommodation.

The Act at the same time allows the report to be delivered through an electronic service established for that purpose.

The Act itself thus anticipates an electronic way of reporting. The current wording, however, continues to use the phrase “official form”.

The Slovak Ministry of the Interior wanted to replace the paper signature with an electronic one

We found the key document in official materials of the Slovak government and the Ministry of Economy of the Slovak Republic.

It is the measure “Simplify the process of registering the accommodation provider and recording accommodated foreigners”, created within Slovak Government Resolution No. 51/2019.

The responsible body and co-responsible body for the measure were the Ministry of the Interior of the Slovak Republic and the Ministry of Transport and Construction of the Slovak Republic themselves.

The document explicitly proposes:

“To abolish the obligation of the foreigner to sign the written form for reporting the stay of foreigners and to replace it with an electronic form with the foreigner’s electronic signature.”

The material further describes a specific technical solution:

“The foreigner’s signature will be captured on a designated signature tablet and transmitted, together with the data on the foreigner and the data on their stay, via a web service to the IS ECU.”

This was thus not merely a general reflection on digitalisation. The document describes a concrete electronic signature of the foreigner and its transmission into the information system of the Ministry of the Interior.

And more importantly: the task was marked as completed

Next to this measure it says:

“Status as of 31.12.2019: TASK COMPLETED”

The document then states that a final analysis of signatures and of a possible modification of the Foreigners Records system (Evidencia cudzincov) and of the application used on the accommodation provider’s side was under way. No later than March 2020, the option of entering signatures directly into the information system through an already used service was to be launched in the production environment.

This is a very important official source.

The Slovak state administration thus not only accepted an electronic signature in theory. It explicitly prepared an electronic form with the foreigner’s electronic signature as a replacement for the signature on a paper form.

Why was the electronic signature addressed at all?

The official document explains that the original paper signature was an administrative burden for accommodation providers.

The aim of the measure was to simplify the process of registering accommodation providers and recording accommodated foreigners while preserving the ability to verify that the data was provided by the specific foreigner.

The document explicitly states that retaining the foreigner’s signature is necessary, and that the signature may be made either on the official form or in an electronic form.

This is essential.

The goal of electronisation was not to remove the signature. The goal was to move the signature from paper to an electronic form.

So does the foreigner’s electronic signature exist in Slovakia?

Yes.

There is an official document of the Slovak government and the Ministry of the Interior of the Slovak Republic confirming that an electronic form with the foreigner’s electronic signature was designed as a replacement for the paper signature, and that the task in question was marked as completed in 2019.

Electronic reporting of the stay of foreigners has been operated in Slovakia for a long time, and the Ministry of the Interior of the Slovak Republic continues to provide electronic services for this agenda.

Does this automatically mean that every third-party electronic signature replaces the official form?

No.

And this is exactly where precision is needed.

The official material of the Slovak government and the Ministry of the Interior confirms the existence of an electronic form with the foreigner’s electronic signature and its connection to the ECU system.

It does not state, however, that any electronic signature stored in any private third-party system automatically has the same legal effects as the electronic form of the Ministry of the Interior of the Slovak Republic.

This is an important distinction.

What does this mean for Best Guest?

During electronic check-in, Best Guest actually obtains the guest’s electronic signature together with the data from the registration form.

It is therefore not just a database record or an unticked consent.

The guest signs electronically a specific check-in that contains their identification data and the data on the stay, and this signed record is then kept in the system.

This is considerably stronger evidence than a system that merely collects data without a signature.

At the same time, however, two separate things need to be distinguished:

1. the electronic signature and the electronic record of the stay, which Best Guest keeps,
2. the official electronic report intended for the information system of the Ministry of the Interior of the Slovak Republic.

These two are not automatically identical.

What does the current Ministry of the Interior say?

The current website of the Ministry of the Interior of the Slovak Republic still states the accommodation provider’s obligation to ensure the official form for reporting the stay of a foreigner is completed.

The website also states that the provider’s obligation to ensure the official form is completed, to keep it for two years and to present the originals for inspection on request remains in place.

This information therefore cannot be ignored.

It is, however, interesting that the official government material of 2019 explicitly states that the Act itself did not at that time require the accommodation provider to archive written forms, and that the archiving requirement stemmed from an instruction published on the Ministry of the Interior’s website.

So we have an official historical basis for the electronic signature and, at the same time, current web instructions of the Ministry of the Interior that continue to work with the official form and its archiving.

What follows in practice?

The most reasonable conclusion is as follows:

A foreigner’s electronic signature is not a legal experiment created by a private company in Slovakia. The Slovak Ministry of the Interior itself officially prepared a solution whose aim was to replace the signature on a paper form with an electronic signature in an electronic form.

This is a significant official basis for the electronic processing of the signature.

At the same time, however, it cannot be automatically inferred from the available materials that every electronically signed third-party document is, without more, identical to the electronic form of the Ministry of the Interior of the Slovak Republic.

For an electronic check-in system it is therefore important in particular that:

• the signature is unambiguously linked to the specific guest and the specific stay,
• all data required by law is preserved,
• it is possible to prove when and what the guest signed,
• the electronic record can be retrieved over the long term,
• the electronic signature is not confused with the electronic submission of the report to the police unit,
• and the provider does not claim that its system automatically replaces the official form unless it has a specific legal or technical basis for such a claim.

What we have not yet managed to confirm

In the publicly available materials of the Ministry of the Interior of the Slovak Republic we did not find a current position that would explicitly state:

“A foreigner’s electronic signature stored in an external third-party system is equivalent to the original of the official form.”

We likewise did not find a current public position of the Ministry of the Interior addressed directly to providers of electronic check-in systems.

That is the limit of what we can claim on the basis of publicly available documents.

On the other hand, we have a direct official material of the Slovak authorities confirming that an electronic form with the foreigner’s electronic signature was designed by the state as a replacement for the paper signature and that the task in question was marked as completed.

Conclusion

A foreigner’s electronic signature at a Slovak check-in therefore cannot simply be labelled invalid merely because the Act uses the term “official form”.

The official documentation of the Slovak authorities shows that the Ministry of the Interior of the Slovak Republic itself worked with an electronic form and an electronic signature of the foreigner as a solution meant to replace the signature on a paper form.

At the same time, it is necessary to distinguish between this state electronic solution and an electronic signature stored in a third-party system.

For Best Guest it is therefore reasonable and defensible to claim:

Best Guest uses the guest’s electronic signature and keeps an electronically signed record of their stay. This approach corresponds to the direction of electronisation that the Slovak Ministry of the Interior itself officially prepared for recording the stay of foreigners. The electronic record in Best Guest, however, cannot automatically be regarded as identical to an electronic submission through the system of the Ministry of the Interior of the Slovak Republic.

Official sources

• Ministry of Economy of the Slovak Republic: Simplify the process of registering the accommodation provider and recording accommodated foreigners
• Government of the Slovak Republic: the relevant measure within Government Resolution No. 51/2019
• Ministry of the Interior of the Slovak Republic: Reporting the stay of foreigners
• Ministry of the Interior of the Slovak Republic: Entry in the guest register
• Ministry of the Interior of the Slovak Republic: User guide to the ECU portal of the Ministry of the Interior of the Slovak Republic
• Slov-Lex: Act No. 404/2011 Coll. on the Residence of Foreigners, in particular § 113

Information verified against publicly available official sources of the Slovak authorities as of October 2026. This text is not legal advice.