Sending a package to Slovakia: transit time, VAT and shipping costs

Sending a package to Slovakia: What companies and online retailers should know

Slovakia is located in Central Europe and borders:

• Austria
• Czechia
• Poland
• Hungary
• Ukraine

This means the country is located directly on important European road, rail and production corridors.

The capital:

Bratislava

It is located in the far west of the country and only a few kilometers from Austria.

Other important economic and industrial locations include:

• Žilina
• Trnava
• Nitra
• Trenčín
• Banská Bystrica
• Košice
• Prešov

For German companies, Slovakia is therefore an easily accessible B2B market within the EU internal market.

Slovakia has been a member of the European Union since 2004.

Slovakia has been in the EU since:

1 May 2004

Member of the European Union.

It has also been part of the Schengen Area since 2007.

The country has used the euro since:

January 1, 2009.

This has several advantages for German companies:

• no standard import duties
• No currency exchange between the euro and the local currency
• no normal customs clearance
• well-developed European transport connections

This makes shipping significantly different, for example, from deliveries to the immediately adjacent Ukraine or to nearby Serbia.

What documents do I need for Slovakia?

For a normal parcel or goods delivery from Germany, no special customs documents are required.

For B2B shipments, the following are typically required in the normal business process:

• commercial invoice
• delivery note
• Shipping label
• packing list (if applicable)
• Transport document (if applicable)

For pallet and truck traffic, for example, the following may also be required:

CMR consignment note

should be used.

Customs documents such as:

• CN22
• CN23
• Export accompanying document
• EUR.1

However, they are not required for the normal transport of Union goods.

Do I need a EUR.1 card for Slovakia?

No.

An EUR.1 is a proof of preferential origin for certain trade in goods with countries outside the normal EU internal market.

Slovakia itself is an EU member.

For a normal delivery of goods:

Germany → Slovakia

Therefore, no EUR.1 is needed.

A preferential certificate of origin is also not required for normal free movement of goods.

However, this does not mean that the origin of goods is generally unimportant for companies.

The origin of goods may become relevant again for subsequent exports from Slovakia to a third country.

However, no import duty is levied for direct shipments from Germany to Slovakia.

How does a B2B delivery to Slovakia work in terms of VAT?

In the case of a sale from a German company to a Slovakian company, the following may apply under the legal conditions:

tax-exempt intra-Community delivery

available.

Relevant factors include the business partner's status and their valid VAT identification number.

The Slovak VAT identification number generally begins with:

SK

and should be checked accordingly in B2B transactions.

It is also important to have tax-related proof that the goods have actually been transported from Germany to another EU member state.

Therefore, for recurring B2B deliveries, the following should be considered in particular:

• Customer's VAT ID number
• Billing Details
• Proof of shipment or transport
• tax reporting data

be cleanly linked together.

What VAT rate applies to sales to private customers?

For cross-border e-commerce to private customers, special rules apply within the EU.

For intra-community distance sales, there is an EU-wide sales threshold of:

Euro 10.000.

Above this threshold, VAT is generally levied in the customer's country of destination.

Therefore, Slovakian VAT may become relevant for a private customer in Slovakia.

The standard rate is:

23% VAT.

The transaction can be processed via:

One Stop Shop, or OSS for short

respectively.

This means that a German online retailer does not have to register for VAT separately in each individual EU member state solely because of such distance sales.

For larger European online retailers, Slovakia is therefore much easier to access than many third-country markets.

IOSS is not required for shipping from Germany to Slovakia.

IOSS and OSS are often confused because the EU has decided that taxes apparently don't yet have enough abbreviations.

For goods that are already within the European Union and are sold from Germany to Slovakia, the following applies:

Health Care

the relevant procedure for certain B2C distance sales.

iOS

However, this applies to certain distance sales of goods imported into the European Union from a third country.

IOSS is therefore not required for normal shipping from a German warehouse to Slovakia.

How long does it take for a package to arrive in Slovakia?

DHL currently lists the following for standard parcel shipping:

2 to 3 working days.

This makes Slovakia one of the most easily accessible European shipping destinations.

The actual runtime can still be affected by:

• Pickup time
• weekends
• Holidays
• destination
• Weather and traffic conditions
• selected shipping service

For:

• urgent spare parts
• Production material
• Time-critical components

An express service can speed up delivery even further.

Write the correct address for Slovakia

DHL requires Latin letters and Arabic numerals.

A typical business address might be structured like this, for example:

ABC Components sro
Kukučinova 34
010 01 ŽILINA
SLOVAKIA

The Slovak postal code consists of five digits and is usually in the format:

010 01

written.

Additionally, the following should be considered when sending business shipments:

• Phone number
• Email address

the recipient's information will be stored.

This makes delivery notifications and contacting the relevant authorities easier in case of problems.

Bratislava is particularly closely connected to Central Europe.

Bratislava is located directly on the Austrian border.

The distance to Vienna is correspondingly short.

This makes the region very easily accessible for goods traffic from Germany via the Central European road network.

Important industrial corridors also connect Slovakia with:

• Austria
• Czechia
• Poland
• Hungary
• Germany

For regular B2B deliveries, in addition to classic parcel shipping, the following methods can also be used:

• General cargo
• Pallet shipping
• Direct journeys
• Partial loads
• Full truckloads

to be interesting.

The automotive industry ensures strong B2B goods flows.

Slovakia is one of the most important automotive production locations in Europe.

The automotive ecosystem includes both international vehicle manufacturers and several hundred supplier companies.

This creates interesting trade flows for German suppliers in the following areas:

• Vehicle components
• Tools
• Production facilities
• Automation
• Electronics
• Sensors
• spare parts
• Packaging and operating materials

Besides Bratislava and the west of the country, regions around:

• Trnava
• Nitra
• Žilina

a strong industrial importance.

In the east, a significant industrial and automotive location is also developing around Košice.

Pallets and machinery transported by road to Slovakia

For larger B2B shipments, road freight transport is the most obvious solution.

It is suitable, for example, for:

• Machine
• Pallets
• several packages
• Production material
• heavy spare parts

Unlike transport to a third country, no import customs procedure usually needs to be completed at the Slovakian border.

This allows the goods to be transported directly to the recipient within the European transport network.

For more information, please visit International freight shipping for businesses.

Intrastat can become relevant in cases of high trade flows.

The absence of a customs declaration does not automatically mean that companies have no statistical reporting obligations whatsoever.

For larger intra-community trade flows:

Intrastat declarations

become relevant.

Whether a reporting obligation arises depends, among other things, on the annual volume of goods traded and the applicable reporting thresholds.

Companies with regular and large-scale deliveries between Germany and Slovakia should therefore check whether their goods movements need to be reported for foreign trade statistics.

Automate shipping data for regular B2B deliveries

For regular deliveries to Slovakia, much of the shipping information is repeated.

These include, for example:

• Recipient address
• Product information
• Weight
• Package dimensions
• Reference numbers
• Shipping service

This data can be directly transferred to the shipping process via shop and ERP connections.

This allows:

• Automatically create labels
• Compare shipping costs
• Replay tracking data
• Manage recurring recipients
• Reduce manual input errors

Especially for fast EU deliveries, automation is often more effective than additional customs functions that are not needed for this destination country anyway.

You can find out more at Automate shipping documents and reduce errors.