Bratislava, February 14, 2023 – The Slovak National Theater (SND) concludes contracts with the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic (MK) with unrealistic budgets, which cannot cover its operating expenses. As the audit of the Supreme Audit Office of the Slovak Republic (SAO) showed, the budgets were undersized and did not correspond to the level of previous years at the time of their approval. For the audited period of 2019 to 2021, the original budgets increased by more than 24 percent to a total of 65 million euros. For a significant part of the responsibility for the insufficient quality is responsible the Department of Culture, which approves the budget, controls it and, above all, provides funds for the operation of the theater. At the same time, the auditors revealed that 36 changes in the organizational structure took place in the SND over the course of 3.5 years, while the theater management did not prove in no case the validity of these changes through a qualified personnel analysis. In this context, there is a risk of possible labor law lawsuits, which may burden the theater's budget even more in the future.

The audit also confirmed a number of shortcomings in the management and internal control system of the SND, to which the Committee for Culture and Media of the National Council of the Slovak Republic and citizens drew the attention of the national auditors through suggestions. Members of the parliamentary committee are scheduled to discuss the results of the SAO audit on Tuesday.

The full text of the press release about this issue in Slovak language