After all costs were taken into account, one square metre of exhibition space in Osaka cost almost €112,000, 19 times more than at EXPO Dubai, where the average cost was €6,000 per square metre. The state also spent €1.4 million on an architectural study and project documentation for the planned Osaka pavilion—around 12 times the cost of a comparable investment for EXPO Dubai. Neither of the solutions developed through the tender was ultimately implemented, resulting in wasted public funds and a lost investment.

Auditors of the Supreme Audit Office of the Slovak Republic (SAO SR) also found €889,000 in inefficient expenditure. Findings concerning potentially ineligible expenditure on flights and accommodation totalling a further €450,000 were referred to prosecutors. SLOVAKIA TRAVEL, which arranged the services through a contracted supplier, failed to provide relevant documentation and evidence showing whether the people whose participation was paid for with public funds were authorised to attend and whether the expenditure was lawful and economical. The SAO SR also referred its findings to the Public Procurement Office and the Ministry of Finance for further administrative proceedings due to breaches of budgetary rules.

Slovakia’s official participation in the World EXPO in Osaka was approved by the Government in October 2022, with the responsible institutions already having access to significant findings from the SAO’s audit of EXPO Dubai. The Ministry of Economy was initially responsible for the project, but in May 2024 the Government transferred the agenda to the Ministry of Tourism and Sport. Responsibility for implementing the exhibition, which ran from April to October 2025, was assigned to the budgetary organisation SLOVAKIA TRAVEL.

However, the two ministries did not properly hand over the project or share important information from the previous SAO audit. This non-standard management approach contributed to a repetition of past mistakes. The actual cost of Slovakia’s participation was €7.8 million in the United Arab Emirates and €7.6 million in Osaka. Auditors identified inefficient use of public funds amounting to €635,000 in Dubai and €889,000 in Osaka. The findings from the Dubai audit were also examined by the Government Audit Office, which previously fined the Ministry of Economy €100,000 for breaches of budgetary rules.

“The next World EXPO will take place in Belgrade in the middle of next year, and those responsible for the project must fundamentally change their approach to its preparation. The starting point must be a clear vision of what Slovakia wants to achieve through its participation and how it wants to present the country, so that the millions spent from the state budget deliver added and, above all, measurable value. The previous two participations could not be properly and objectively evaluated because they were organised without defined objectives and measurable indicators,” said Ľubomír Andrassy, President of the SAO SR.

He added: “World EXPOs are not tourism exhibitions or travel agencies. They are events with significant potential to showcase national innovation and economic potential and to establish new business and academic relationships. It is therefore important that responsibility for EXPO participation lies with an institution with the appropriate expertise to present the country’s development potential and implement a vision for Slovakia’s development.”

The SAO SR recommends that the Committee for Finance and Budget of the National Council of the Slovak Republic request a comprehensive report from the Ministry of Tourism and Sport on preparations for next year’s exhibition in Belgrade, together with a summary of concrete measures to prevent shortcomings identified in previous audits.

Only a year before the opening of EXPO Osaka, the Government decided that, for time and financial reasons, Slovakia would not build a new pavilion. Instead, it rented 53 square metres of exhibition space and a further 15 square metres for technical staff in a shared pavilion with ten other countries.

“The substantial reduction in the size of the exhibition—from a two-storey, 1,300-square-metre pavilion to 68 square metres—was not reflected in any significant adjustment to the budget. On the contrary, the cost of building the Osaka exhibition space was twice as high as in Dubai. Unlike the previous exhibition in Dubai, the Osaka presentation included no physical exhibits, only occasional presentations of products and Slovak regions, supplemented by digital projections and cultural performances,” Andrassy said.

The total cost of Slovakia’s participation in Osaka reached €7.6 million. Organisational costs for a dedicated pavilion had originally been budgeted at €2 million. Despite the much smaller space, Slovakia paid €2.6 million for the organisational arrangements in Osaka. Personnel costs were budgeted at €544,000, more than €100,000 above the Dubai figure, despite a smaller organisational team and a much smaller pavilion. The staffing of the Slovak team was not reassessed following the major change in the exhibition space, and decisions on filling positions were made on an ad hoc basis, without professional or qualification criteria.

According to the SAO SR, a key factor behind the significant shortcomings in the organisational arrangements was the late launch of the public procurement process, followed by its cancellation on the basis of an internal decision by the then management of SLOVAKIA TRAVEL. After a decision by the Public Procurement Office, a framework agreement was subsequently concluded with the winning bidder—but only two months after the official opening of the exhibition.

The inefficient use of public funds was also significantly affected by an amendment to the framework agreement that was concluded in breach of public procurement law and without a professional assessment of the cost-effectiveness of the additional changes. Auditors identified €636,000 in inefficient expenditure on organisational arrangements and a further almost €248,000 in inefficient expenditure on constructing the national exhibition. The latter mainly concerned activities added through the amendment that auditors considered duplicative of the original framework agreement, including work on staff facilities, technical supervision and engineering services. The inefficient expenditure also included the rental of a diesel generator whose capacity significantly exceeded the actual needs of the exhibition.

A further €5,000 in inefficient expenditure resulted from an improperly conducted financial control. Given the significance of the findings, the SAO SR referred the audit report to prosecutors to assess the potential criminal liability of those responsible for preparing and implementing the EXPO Osaka project.