With a 2002 population of almost 5.4 million and an area of 49 034 km², Slovakia is ranked among smaller European countries. Despite this, it is a country of natural contrasts with the Carpathian Mountains in the north and the low-lying valley of the Danube in the southwest. The highest point is the Gerlach Peak in the High Tatras with 2 655 m, the lowest is the place in the east of the country where the river Bodrog is leaving the Slovak Republic, which lies at just 94 m above the sea level. The population is a rich mixture of minorities which represent together 14,2 % of the total, with the Hungarians alone making up 9,7 % of the population.
Slovakia has existed as an independent sovereign country since 1 January 1993, when Czechoslovakia was divided. Nevertheless, it is a territory with a long history, inhabited since the Stone Age, and involved in many of the significant movements of European history. Slavonic Princedoms united in the early 9th century to form the Great Moravian Empire later became a part of the Hungarian Feudal State. In 16th and 17th century the majority of Hungarian State territory fell under Turkish occupation. Administrative bodies were relocated at that time in remaining free areas situated in the north part of Hungarian State, that is a present area of the Slovak Republic. Bratislava became a centre. The next centuries again saw the history of Slovakia intertwined with that of a great empire, this time the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until the creation of the Czechoslovak Republic in the aftermath of the First World War in 1918.
However, in January 1969 a new socialist federal republic was established, granting the Czech and Slovak republics autonomy over local affairs. In January 1993 Czechoslovakia was replaced by two independent states: the Slovak Republic and the Czech Republic. Bratislava became the capital of the Slovak Republic.
The territory of Slovakia was divided in 1960-1990 into 4 regions and 38 districts. Regions were abolished in 1991 and until July 1996 Slovakia was administratively divided only into 38 districts.
According to the Law on Territorial and Administrative Division of the Slovak Republic, which came into force on 24 July 1996, regions broken up into districts have become the administrative units of the SR. In terms of the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) NUTS level 2 was created of 4 groups of regions, NUTS level 3 comprised 8 regions, NUTS 4 (present LAU 1) consisted of 79 districts and NUTS 5 (present LAU 2) 2 891 municipalities (December 31, 2002). The statistical office therefore moved to the data collection and publication of information based on the new regional structure in 1997.
The 1 st January 2004 the districts were abolished as administrative units, but they have been still remaining as territorial and statistical units. Administrative functions were moved from districts to self-governed municipalities and to so-called ward offices of specialized state administration, i.e. that several central government institutions have own ward offices of particular territorial delimitation.
