Where can you save money with an electronic signature?

Article content

Many Slovak companies and citizens have already put aside the fear of electronic signatures. Their reward for this step is saving time and significantly lower administrative costs. If you also want to save on administrative and court fees, a qualified electronic signature is an effective tool to help you do so. In this article, we bring you a brief overview of areas where court and administrative fees are halved or not paid at all by claimants thanks to qualified electronic signatures.

Legal framework for court and administrative fees

Online communication reduces the distance between the parties involved and allows us to have regular contact with a fast connection. Many of us have also discovered the benefits of electronic signatures, which save us time in real life without having to visit various offices or other organisations. Many companies have also calculated impressive figures showing how much they can save by the digitalisation of corporate processes at various levels of the organization.

Judicial and administrative fees are levied for individual acts or in proceedings of courts, state administration of courts, prosecutor’s offices and for acts of state administration bodies, higher territorial units, municipalities, state archives, certain recognised educational institutions and others. The subject of these fees are acts and proceedings of judicial and administrative authorities listed in the relevant fee schedules. The legal framework for them is provided by Act No 71/1992 Coll. on court fees and the fee for the extract from the criminal record and Act No 145/1995 Coll. on administrative fees. Both legal regulations include, in their final provisions, a clear schedule of currently applicable judicial and administrative fees.

The rate of the fee is normally a fixed amount or a percentage of the fee base. Both pieces of legislation also provide that where acts and proceedings are carried out on the basis of an application submitted by electronic means, and unless the law provides otherwise for individual items in schedule, the rate of the fee shall be 50 % of the amount set out in the schedule. Where annexes are included in the application, the reduced rate of fees shall apply only if those annexes are in electronic form.

If the rate of the fee in the fee schedule is determined per number of pages and the act is performed in electronic form, the entire act shall be charged at the rate of the fee set out in the fee schedule, otherwise at the rate of the fee at the lowest amount set out in the fee schedule, if that is set out in the fee schedule. The number of pages shall not be taken into account in this case.

Did you know that? …
… signing legal documents and submitting applications to various authorities electronically in most cases requires the higher legal strength of an electronic signature? This means that, for example, if you want to make an electronic filing for the establishment of a trade, which in this case is completely exempt from the administrative fee, you must have a qualified electronic signature.

Qualified electronic signature from NFQES platform

In most cases, electronic communication with courts, prosecutors, municipalities and other state authorities and institutions requires an electronic signature guaranteeing higher legal force. As we have already indicated above, such an instrument is a qualified electronic signature (QES). For some transactions, the law also requires the use of a qualified time stamp. Under Act No 272/2016 Coll. on trust services, a qualified electronic signature allows the natural person who has executed it to be reliably and unambiguously identified.

With a qualified electronic signature it is possible to sign legal acts for which Act No. 40/1965 Coll. of the Civil Code in documentary form requires a written form. QES thus replaces the written form of a handwritten signature in practice. Thanks to these attributes, it can be used for an increasing number of legal acts carried out in both the commercial and public sectors, and it appears that this trend will continue in the future.

A qualified electronic signature replaces a handwritten signature and provides users with the highest security and legal strength when signing contracts and various submissions. QES can only be issued by a certification authority or a company that is a trusted service provider under the European eIDAS Regulation and is registered in the trusted list of providers. A qualified electronic signature provides authenticity, integrity and non-repudiation, which means that it guarantees the immutability of the signed documents at the time of signing. Thus, the signatory cannot claim that the signature was not made by him or her.

Practical advantages of a qualified electronic signature:

• ensuring authenticity with the same validity as a physical signature,
• speed and efficiency of signing with the ability to sign multiple documents at once,
• remote access with the ability to sign documents from any location with an internet connection and with any device,
• reduced administrative costs, when companies and citizens save not only on court and administrative fees, which can amount to savings in the hundreds or thousands of euros per year, but the savings are also noticeable due to the elimination of the need to print documents, store them in paper form and the elimination of postal and similar expenses,
• high level of security, where the issuance of qualified certificates for QES is preceded by a rigorous authentication process coupled with secure means and processes of identity verification. As a result, QES provides high security and trustworthiness at the highest legal level,
• international acceptance.

The NFQES platform is a certification authority with the status of a trust service provider under the European eIDAS Regulation. If you are interested in obtaining a qualified electronic signature or have any questions, you can contact us at any time.

Court fees – commercial register

• Filing an application for the first registration of a joint-stock company: 550 €
• Filing for the first registration of other legal entities: 220 €
• Filing for the first registration of a branch of a company: 220 €
• Filing for a change or addition of data: 50 €.

In connection with the above-mentioned fees, it should also be noted that for the most common filings, such as registrations and changes in joint-stock companies, limited liability companies, and other commercial companies, the law, as of 2025, no longer allows applications for first registration or registration of changes in these entities to be submitted in any form other than electronic. It is expected that this trend will gradually expand to other legislative areas as well.

When submitting a first registration to the Commercial Register of the Slovak Republic or filing a proposal for registration of changes, the applicant (or a person authorized by the applicant) must possess a qualified electronic signature. This means that if you want to make such a change in your company or register a new business entity, you must have a qualified electronic signature yourself, or you must authorize someone who does have a QES (qualified electronic signature) to submit the application on your behalf.

Administrative fees – Real estate cadastre

• Application to initiate proceedings for the registration of a property right in the Land Registry as a paper submission: 100 €
• Application to initiate proceedings for the registration of a property right in the Land Registry as an electronic submission signed with a qualified electronic signature (QES): 50 €
• Expedited proceedings for the registration of a property right in the Land Registry as a paper submission: 300 €
• Expedited proceedings for the registration of a property right in the Land Registry as an electronic submission signed with a QES: 150 €. This fee is further reduced by 15 € if the party to the proceedings has submitted an electronic notification of the intended application for entry in accordance with § 30 of Act No. 162/1995.

Administrative fees – Trade licensing office

Administrative fees in the business license section increased in 2024, as did many other administrative and court fees. The most common administrative fees in this area include the following:

• Issuance of a trade licence certificate:
  • For each free trade in paper form: 7 €
  • For each free trade in electronic form with QES: 0 €
  • For each craft trade or for each tied trade in paper form: 22 €
  • For each craft trade or each electronically bound trade with a QES: 11 €
• Extract from the public part of the trade register for one entrepreneur in paper form: 5 €,
• Extract from the public part of the trade register for one entrepreneur in electronic form with QES: 0 €,
• Making changes to the certificate of trade business in paper form: 5 €,
• Making changes to the certificate of trade business in electronic form with QES: 0 €.

Other administrative fees in the field of trade business are also reduced to half or completely exempted from the fee in the case of electronic filing and signing with a qualified electronic signature.

Wondering when you as a self-employed person have to communicate with the state electronically and why it is worth it?

Make your life easier with an electronic signature

Once we set aside our concerns about electronic signing, we realize that this form of communication and handling of personal, business, and official matters saves us a great deal of time—and in many cases, a significant amount of money as well. Gradually, digitalization trends are being reflected in effective legislation, and these legal provisions already impose obligations in many areas to communicate and sign various documents electronically.

It is almost certain that the trends of electronization and digitalisation will gradually spread to other areas of life and therefore, if you are hesitating to acquire a qualified electronic signature today, you will probably not miss this obligation sooner or later.