Energy poverty in Slovakia: Officially defined, but misrepresented in major policies

Slovakia is one of the few countries with an official energy poverty definition. Nevertheless, it is listed among the ten most lagging EU Member States in terms of progress in alleviating energy poverty. There are also concerns about the fairness of measures to combat it. This paper builds on the energy justice perspective and a spatially-sensitive evaluation to critically analyse Slovak policies directly and indirectly tackling the issue. Do they reflect the three fundamental pillars of energy justice? And, given the issue's uneven socio-spatial occurrence in the country, are these policies designed and implemented to reduce pre-existing inequalities? We reveal that the multidimensional nature and specificities of energy poverty in Slovakia remain misrecognized in major policies. Moreover, there are shortcomings in the policies' distributional and participatory aspects. Most importantly, social welfare benefits are hard to access for energy-poor households, as are energy efficiency support schemes. Though some policies address dimensions linked to the issue, energy poverty's uneven incidence is not reflected. We conclude by pointing to the untapped potential of major policies in solving the problem.