Violence against women as an extreme form of discrimination is one the most serious form of violation of the human rights of women. The aim of this paper is to show how selected documents of the UN, Council of Europe and the European Union devoted to gender based violence against women are reflected in Slovak law. Legislation often uses only gender-neutral formulations. International conventions and documents tend to use a more narrow term – gender based violence against women. The Istanbul Convention covers all areas that may have an impact on the elimination of violence against women and help its victims. The Slovak Republic was one of the first states that signed the Istanbul Convention; nevertheless this convention is still not ratified. The EU Victims’ Directive, which was transposed by just adopted new Victims’ Act in Slovakia, has several goals that can impact positively on victims of crime, including ensuring that all victims of crime have access to support services, protecting particularly vulnerable victims, and preventing ‘secondary victimisation’ of victims with respect to their treatment by the criminal justice system. Notably, the Victims’ Directive variously recognises victims of violence because of their gender, gender identity or gender expression. But in new Slovak Victims’ Act is missing gender as form of discrimination, so the victims of gender-based violence, victims of crimes because of their gender identity or expression are not included to “vulnerable victims.” Likewise, a special act concerning gender–based violence against women has not been adopted yet in Slovakia. The authors focus on the new concepts contained in the Istanbul Convention, point out to imprecise translation of concepts into Slovak language and recommend introducing of some new concepts and their definitions in the draft of Act on Elimination of Gender-Based Violence. The adoption of the “special” and “comprehensive” Act on Elimination of Gender-Based Violence based on Istanbul Convention together with the revised “general” Victims’ Act based on EU Victims’ Directive may become one of steps toward improvement of the situation in the area of gender-based violence against women.
The paper focuses on railway services in the Slovak Republic and describes the organization of public administration in this area and its responsibility for protecting consumer rights. It analyses customers’ rights stipulated in the Slovak legislation and comes to a conclusion that they drive mainly from the EU law. The paper also presents a customer satisfaction survey regarding rail services in the Slovak Republic and several other EU states and proposes suggestions on how to improve customer satisfaction. The aim is to start a discussion on customers’ rights in the Slovak Republic because in the last couple of years the total number of rail customers is on the rise.
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