And the 2018 winner is the town of Vranov nad Topľou in Eastern Slovakia, according to a study conducted by the watchdog Transparency International Slovakia. It has looked at how transparent localities are in eleven areas of public policy by, for example, making contracts public, allowing open access to local council's meetings or having a participative budget that finances projects proposed by local inhabitants. Bratislava's borough of Nove Mesto came second with the town of Rôžnava third. The least transparent municipalities are Humenne, Šurany and Veľké Kapušany. Jana Vaľová who is Humenne's mayor and also an MP for the Smer party, has played down the study and the ranking labelling them a marketing tool for the watchdog which puts the Smer party at a disadvantage.
Overall, Transparency International's analysts have noticed progress when it comes to video or audio records from the meetings of local councils, which are already published by 65 of the 100 largest municipalities. In 2010, this was only the case for 13 of them. A Code of Ethics for Employees has so far been adopted and published by 48 municipalities, and in 38 of them it also applies to elected officials such as the mayor or local MPs. A slight deterioration occurred in the way in which municipalities inform about grants, where up to seventy percent of them did not disclose information on smaller grants allocated directly by the mayor for various local projects. The same applies to how companies owned by municipalities make their activities known to the public.
