The Administrative Court in Bratislava will reassess some provisions of the generally binding regulation of the city of Nitra on temporary parking with the Road Traffic Act
Legal principle stated by the Court:
The legislator in Section 452(1) of the Code of Administrative Court Procedure has established the appropriate application of the provisions on proceedings before the regional court to cassation proceedings, with the proviso that the appropriate application of these provisions shall not apply if the law provides for a special regulation in cassation proceedings. The provisions on proceedings on the compliance of a generally binding regulation of a municipality, city district or self-governing region with the law, government regulation and generally binding legal regulations of ministries and other central state administration bodies, established in Sections 357-367 of the Code of Administrative Court Procedure, are to be found in Part 4 of the Code of Administrative Court Procedure. Their appropriate application in cassation proceedings is therefore directly excluded by the provision of Section 452(1) of the Code of Administrative Court Procedure.
At the same time, the provisions on cassation proceedings (Sections 438 – 471 of the Civil Procedure Code) do not contain any special legal regulation for the situation when, during the cassation proceedings, the defendant annuls the contested general binding regulation.
With regard to the legal conclusion stated above, as well as the difference in content in both generaly binding regulations, the Court of Cassation came to the conclusion about the need to apply Section 454 of the Code of Administrative Court Procedure, according to which the decision of the Court of Cassation is determined by the state at the time of the finality of the contested decision of the regional court and did not take into account the changes that occurred in the cassation proceedings.
On September 30, 2025, the Supreme Administrative Court of the Slovak Republic, by its resolution case file no. 3Svk/4/2024, annulled the resolution of the Regional Court in Nitra (hereinafter referred to as the “Regional Court”), by which it dismissed the prosecutor’s lawsuit regarding the non-compliance of certain provisions of the generally binding regulation of the city of Nitra on temporary parking (hereinafter referred to as the “Regional Regulation of the City of Nitra on Temporary Parking”) and returned the case to the Administrative Court in Bratislava for further proceedings. The Court of Cassation agreed with the Regional Court that the issue of making the issuance of a parking card conditional on the payment of municipal waste fees does not constitute a delegated exercise of state administration. On the other hand, it emphasized that the filed lawsuit results in the prosecutor’s objection regarding the non-compliance of certain provisions of the generally binding regulation of the City of Nitra on Temporary Parking with Section 6a(1) of Act No. 135/1961 on land communications, as amended (hereinafter referred to as the “Road Act”). The Regional Court therefore erred in not examining the prosecutor’s argument on a factual basis.
The City Council of Nitra adopted the Nitra City Council’s Temporary Parking generally binding regulation. It stipulated in an amendment that a parking card will only be issued to an applicant who has no arrears in the municipal waste fee. The prosecutor filed a protest against this generally binding regulation due to the inconsistency of the relevant provisions of the Nitra City Council’s Temporary Parking generally binding regulation with Section 6(2) of Act No. 369/1990 on Municipal Organization, as amended (which addresses the conditions for the adoption of a generally binding regulation by the city in matters of delegated state administration – hereinafter referred to as the “Municipal Organization Act”). The Regional Court dismissed the prosecutor’s action.
The Court of Cassation agreed with the Regional Court and the City of Nitra that the contested legal regulation does not constitute a delegated exercise of state administration. It acknowledged that in matters of land communications, self-government and delegated municipal competences meet. However, applying the interpretative rule that everything that the law does not determine as an exercise of delegated state administration competences when regulating the competence of a municipality is an exercise of self-government competences of a municipality (Section 4(4) of the Act on Municipal Organization), it stated that the issue of making the issuance of a parking card conditional on the payment of fees for municipal waste was not transferred to the municipality by the Road Act. Therefore, it is not a delegated exercise of state administration, and it was not possible to assess the compliance of the legal regulation in question with Section 6(2) of the Act on Municipal Organization. The formal designation of the amendment to the generally binding regulation itself does not change this conclusion.
The Court of Cassation also agreed with the Regional Court that the prosecutor’s statement of claim did not contain a proposal to declare the inconsistency of the Nitra City Council’s Temporary Parking generally binding regulation with Section 6(1) of the Municipal Organization Act. However, the Court of Cassation concluded that, given that the prosecutor had based his claim on the incorrect designation of the amendment, which was also acknowledged by the City of Nitra, and had presented relevant arguments in the claim regarding the inconsistency of the affected provisions of the Nitra City Council’s Temporary Parking Regulations with Section 6a(1) of the Road Act, which regulates the municipality’s self-government, the Regional Court should have examined the prosecutor’s arguments on the merits. The Court of Cassation therefore annulled the regional court’s dismissing decision, remitted the case to the administrative court for further proceedings and imposed on it the obligation to deal with the plaintiff’s relevant arguments.
The City of Nitra annulled the contested Administrative Procedure Act during the cassation proceedings and replaced it with a new Administrative Procedure Act. The Court of Cassation emphasised in the context that the current legal regulation of the administrative provision in the cassation proceedings allowed for this change to the Administrative Procedure Act. The application principle, according to which the decision of the Court of Cassation is determined by the state at the time of the validity of the contested decision of the regional court, did not consider the changes that occurred in the cassation proceedings.
This decision was adopted unanimously by the Panel of the Supreme Administrative Court, and no appeal is admissible against it.
This decision was made by Panel No. 3 of the Supreme Administrative Court, composed of: President of the Panel JUDr. Zuzana Šabová, PhD., Judge JUDr. Katarína Benczová and Judge JUDr. Michal Dzurdzík, PhD.