The System of Legal Persons and the Recodification od Slovak Private Law

Abstract

The article describes the shortcomings of the current system of legal entities in Slovak private law and the proposals for recodification, which are being presented for discussion right now.
In the current situation, apart from the relatively comprehensive regulation of company law in the Commercial Code, other forms of legal persons of private law are regulated casuistically, in separate legislation focusing on certain aspects of their functioning only, without clear links between these forms. The Civil Code comprises only a very limited set of general provisions on legal persons.
The recodification drafts and the current discussions present fundamental departures from the current model of various parallel legal forms of legal entities. A systematic approach and a high degree of generalisation are advocated with two basic legal forms of legal entities (associations and foundations). Alongside this, it is proposed to reduce the number of different forms of legal persons and their specific legal arrangements, but also to liberalise the forms of legal persons and to extend the dispositive (non-mandatory) law.