4 Apr 2013


Slovakia's participation in international military, police, and monitoring missions worldwide cost the state €46.7 million last year. Approximately €45.9 million of that came from the Defence Ministry's budget and the rest from the budgets of the Interior, Foreign Affairs and Finance Ministries.

The cabinet acknowledged the expenditure in the form of a report on the activities of Slovakia in international crisis management missions in 2012, the SITA newswire reported on Wednesday, April 3. Hundreds of Slovak soldiers, officers and experts worked abroad last year. The largest Slovak military contingent was deployed in Afghanistan: at the end of last year, there were 344 Slovak soldiers in the ISAF mission there. More Slovaks work in the country as part of the EU Police Mission EUPOL.

There is a large contingent of Slovak peacekeepers in Cyprus, too. At the end of 2012, there were 159 Slovak soldiers in the UNFICYP peacekeeping mission there. Three Slovak officers and two military observers serve in the UN peacekeeping observer mission UNTSO in the Middle East, one officer is part of the EU Police Mission in the Palestinian Territories EUPOL COPPS. In EUFOR ALTHEA in Bosnia and Herzegovina, there were 34 Slovak soldiers at the end of last year, while one officer worked at NATO Headquarters in Sarajevo. In the Balkans, six Slovak policemen served as part of the EU mission EULEX in Kosovo.