On June 24, 2025, the Minister of the Interior of the Slovak Republic set aside the Ministry’s denial of our client’s application for Slovak citizenship by descent. Our client’s great-grandfather was born in what is now Slovakia, emigrated to the United States more than ten years before Czechoslovakia was founded, and became an American citizen before 1918. The Ministry had concluded that he therefore never became a Czechoslovak citizen. The Minister did not agree.
We represented our client from the application through the appeal. What follows is how the case reached the Minister, the decision in his own words, what has been said about it since, and what it does and does not mean for a family whose ancestor left early.
The 2025 decision at a glance
| Authority | Minister of the Interior of the Slovak Republic, deciding an appeal filed by FALATH & PARTNERS, based on the proposal of his special commission for appeals |
| Reference | SL-OLVS-2025/006324-002 |
| Date | issued June 24, 2025, delivered July 7, 2025 |
| Under appeal | the Ministry’s denial, issued March 6, 2025, delivered March 11, 2025 |
| Ancestor | born in present-day Slovakia, emigrated to the United States more than ten years before Czechoslovakia was founded, and naturalized there before October 28, 1918 |
| Question | Could he still have become a Czechoslovak citizen? |
| Answer | Yes. The denial was set aside and the case returned to the Ministry, which was bound by the Minister’s legal view. |
| Provision relied on | Section 2 of Constitutional Act No. 236/1920 Coll. |
| Status | Final. No further appeal lies against it. |
How the case reached the Minister
Our client applied in June 2024 under what was then Section 7(2)(j) of Act No. 40/1993 Coll. on the Citizenship of the Slovak Republic, as amended by Act No. 72/2022 Coll. The provision allowed citizenship to be granted, without the usual eight years of permanent residence in Slovakia, to an applicant whose parent, grandparent, or great-grandparent was a Czechoslovak citizen born in the territory of today’s Slovakia. Since July 15, 2026, the same condition sits in Section 7(8). We come back to that change below.
Nobody disputed where the great-grandfather was born. The Ministry’s objection went to the other half of the condition. In its view, he had lost Hungarian citizenship when he naturalized in the United States, and a man who was no longer a Hungarian citizen in 1918 could not have become a Czechoslovak one. On March 6, 2025, the Ministry denied the application on that basis.
We appealed on March 26, 2025. The appeal rested on a legal analysis of Czechoslovak citizenship after the dissolution of Austria-Hungary that we had completed in November 2023, together with expert opinions on it from two academic legal historians, one Czech and one Slovak, neither of whom was affiliated with this firm.
What the Minister decided
The Minister set the denial aside. On the question that mattered, his reasons read as follows. The translation is ours, from the Slovak original. “The applicant” is our client and “the legal representative” is this firm. The ancestor’s name is redacted.
I take the view that the intention and purpose of the legislature, both in formulating the obligation in question under the cited treaty and in the wording of Section 2 of the Constitutional Act itself, was to ensure that all persons born on the territory of Czechoslovakia, without distinction, acquired Czechoslovak state citizenship as a permanent legal bond with the new state that came into being on October 28, 1918. The only exception was persons who acquired another state citizenship by birth. This also follows from the relevant case law of the then Supreme Administrative Court, which the legal representative cited in the legal analysis.
The provision at issue in the Constitutional Act in no way makes the acquisition of Czechoslovak state citizenship conditional on the person’s previously existing Hungarian citizenship. I concur with the argument of the applicant’s legal representative that, for the acquisition of Czechoslovak state citizenship under Section 2 of the Constitutional Act, it is irrelevant whether the applicant was a Hungarian state citizen at the time the Czechoslovak Republic came into being.
On the contrary, the provision in question in effect lays down only two conditions under which a person acquired Czechoslovak citizenship. The first is birth on the territory of the Czechoslovak Republic, which, in the case of the applicant’s ancestor, was established in the proceedings. As also follows from the relevant case law, to which the legal representative points in the legal analysis submitted, the provision does not concern only persons born on the territory of the Czechoslovak Republic after it came into being. Birth on the territory of the Czechoslovak Republic means the geographically defined territory that, until 1918, that is, until the Czechoslovak Republic came into being, belonged to the preceding state, Austria-Hungary. The second condition is that the person did not acquire another state citizenship by birth. The case file contains no document indicating that [the ancestor] acquired another state citizenship by birth.
In light of the above, it may be concluded that the prior loss of [the ancestor’s] Hungarian state citizenship as a result of his naturalization in the United States of America before the Czechoslovak Republic came into being could not constitute an obstacle to the acquisition of Czechoslovak citizenship under Section 2 of the Constitutional Act.
The case went back to the Ministry, which under Section 59(3) of the Administrative Procedure Code (Act No. 71/1967 Coll., as amended) was bound by the Minister’s legal view. The Ministry then granted our client’s application.
It is tempting to read the Minister’s paragraphs as a formula. They are his conclusion on one family’s file, and since July 15, 2026, every file must also meet a requirement that the decision never had to address.
The dates you have probably heard
Anyone who has looked into early emigration has met a handful of years that get treated as cut-offs. None of them is a cut-off written into any statute, and none of them decided our client’s case. This is where each one comes from.
| Date | Where it comes from | What it actually is |
|---|---|---|
| October 28, 1918 | Czechoslovakia is founded. | The day Czechoslovak citizenship came into existence. Anyone who became a citizen at the founding became one on this day. |
| July 16, 1920 | Constitutional Act No. 236/1920 Coll. takes effect, together with the Minority Treaty signed at Saint-Germain-en-Laye on September 10, 1919. | The Act that set out, looking back to October 28, 1918, who had become a Czechoslovak citizen. |
| January 1, 1910 | Section 1(1) of the 1920 Constitutional Act: a right of domicile held since this date or earlier, and without a break afterward. | The most common way people became citizens in 1918, and the origin of the “pre-1910” label. It is one rule in the Constitutional Act, not all of it. |
| October 28, 1908 | Ten years before the founding of Czechoslovakia. Under the Hungarian Nationality Act of 1879, a Hungarian citizen who stayed abroad for ten years without interruption could lose that citizenship. | A practitioners’ rule of thumb about whether an emigrant was still Hungarian in 1918, and the origin of the “pre-1908” label. It appears in no statute. |
The table explains why so many families were told, or told themselves, that nothing could be done. It says nothing about whether that is true of theirs. By the usual rules of thumb, our client’s great-grandfather fell outside every one of these dates: he had left more than ten years before 1918, and he was an American citizen by then. His case was not decided on any of them.
If your ancestor left in 1960, the year of departure is a formality. If they left in 1903, it is the case, and the case turns on what can be proven about that one ancestor.
Is citizenship granted on this basis secure?
Three published commentaries have questioned the decision. If your application depends on the same question, you should know what they say.
The first appeared in December 2025 on a blog hosted by Columbia University. It called the decision an anomaly that would not last without political will. The second, a lawyer’s commentary from January 2026, rests on a 1931 ruling about Karel Pergler, a signatory of the Pittsburgh Agreement and the young republic’s first envoy to the United States, who had naturalized there in 1906. The Electoral Court held that he had never been a Czechoslovak citizen and would not let him rely on the presumption in Section 2. The author concludes that citizenship granted on the 2025 reading rests on “shaky” ground. The third, published by a citizenship consultancy, says the reading does not follow from the case law the decision cites, and points out that the Ministry has not confirmed it as a general line.
The Pergler ruling is a serious authority, and we do not treat it as anything less. It is also narrower than it is usually made to sound. It was not a judgment of the Supreme Administrative Court on anyone’s citizenship. It was a resolution of the Electoral Court, a special tribunal of twelve members, eleven elected by Parliament, and the question before it was whether a member of Parliament could keep his seat. His citizenship was a preliminary point in that dispute. We have an answer on the substance, and like the rest of our analysis, we keep it for our clients’ files.
On whether the decision would last: it was delivered in July 2025, and the prediction that it would not was written that December. The prediction was wrong. After the landmark case was won by FALATH & PARTNERS, the Slovak Ministry of the Interior’s practice on ancestors who emigrated before 1908/1910 and naturalized in the U.S. before 1918 has changed, and the Ministry has granted citizenship in dozens of our clients’ cases of this kind.
On whether the reading follows from the case law: two academic legal historians reviewed the analysis and the case law it relies on before the appeal was filed, and the Minister, deciding on his appeals commission’s proposal, accepted it.
On what could happen to a grant later: the Constitution of the Slovak Republic provides that no one may be deprived of Slovak citizenship against their will [Article 5(2)]. Under Section 8b(1) of the Citizenship Act, a grant does not take effect if it later turns out that the documents behind it were forged or altered, or that material facts stated in them or in the applicant’s questionnaire were untrue. Neither applies where the documents are genuine, and the facts in them are true.
What changed in July 2026
On July 15, 2026, an amendment to the Citizenship Act took effect. It came after this decision, not before it. It moved the descent route to Section 7(8), dropped the residence permit requirement, and added a duty that bears directly on cases like this one: every application must now include a document or record showing that the ancestor was a Czechoslovak citizen born in the territory of today’s Slovakia. We explain the amendment provision by provision separately, and what it means for the 2025 decision in a commentary of its own.
What the decision is, and what it is not
The Minister decided one appeal, in one case, on the arguments and evidence put forward in that application. Since then, dozens of applications granted on the same argument have changed the Ministry’s practice. That change does not make these applications routine: each one still has to be meticulously prepared and well argued.
Can you still claim Slovak citizenship if your ancestor left before 1910?
Yes, it is possible. Leaving before 1908/1910 does not by itself rule you out, and neither does becoming an American citizen before 1918. In 2025, neither stopped our client, whose great-grandfather did both. Descendants of emigrants like him are very likely eligible. Whether your application succeeds depends on what can be proven about your ancestor.
If your parent, grandparent, or great-grandparent was born in what is now Slovakia and left before Czechoslovakia existed, the assumption that the route is closed to you is worth testing before you accept it. Our record stands at 285+ approvals, and none of our applications have ended in a denial.
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General information on Slovak citizenship law, current as of publication. Not legal advice, and not a substitute for advice on your own circumstances. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.