New rules for flammable substances at work from April 2026

If you last checked the rules on flammable liquids before 2026, you are working from a repealed regulation. Decree No. 96/2004 Coll. of the Ministry of the Interior was repealed as of 31 March 2026.2

It was replaced by Decree No. 38/2026 Coll. on fire safety in the use of flammable liquids with effect from 1 April 2026. One part of it, Section 4(2) on labelling, only takes effect on 1 October 2026.1

Three changes matter for an ordinary site.

• Flammable liquids are no longer divided into the Slovak hazard classes I to IV but into categories 1, 2 and 3 under the European CLP Regulation.
• The volume limit for a space of up to 100 m² has risen from the original 50 litres to 250 litres.
• The share of the most dangerous category within that volume has been tightened from 20% to at most 10%.

The new decree does not define the classification itself. It refers directly to the European CLP Regulation, Regulation (EC) No. 1272/2008, specifically Annex I, points 2.6.1 and 2.6.2.1

For a site that is good news. The category given in the safety data sheet and on the label is the same category Slovak fire safety law works with. There is no longer any need to convert between two systems.

Two quantities decide the category: the flash point and the initial boiling point.7

The third paragraph of Section 3 matters more in practice than it looks. A category 3 liquid heated to its flash point or above is assessed as category 2. So if the process heats something, the label is not enough and the operating temperature decides.

The procedure is therefore straightforward. Read the category off the hazard statement H224, H225 or H226, use it to work out the volume limits, and finally check whether the process heats any of the liquids.

The largest volume of flammable liquids is graded by the floor area of the space. At most a tenth of the total volume may be category 1.1

The threshold in the table has one more consequence that is easily missed. A building where flammable liquids are used in a larger volume than Annex 1 allows counts under Section 2(d) as an operating establishment, with all the requirements that follow. Staying below the threshold is therefore not just a matter of tidiness. It decides which regime the site falls under.

The decree also sets rules that bear directly on day-to-day handling.

• A transport container or a tank of up to 1 000 m³ may be filled to no more than 95% of its volume under Section 62(1).
• A transport container holding a flammable liquid must be kept in a store. That also applies to an empty container that has not been cleared of residues, under Section 62(3).
• Empty containers are stored separately from full ones and the place must be marked EMPTY CONTAINERS under Section 62(4).
• Within one fire compartment of an establishment in a non-production building, at most 2 m³ of category 2 and 3 liquids may be used in total, and across all establishments in such a building at most 5 m³, under Section 8(5).

Watch out for the outdated type 15 label on safety cabinets

For keeping smaller quantities in the space itself, fire resistant storage cabinets are used to the standard STN EN 14470-1, valid in Slovakia in the edition of 1 October 2023.8

Here too there has been a change that has not yet reached suppliers' offers. The 2023 edition replaced the original from 2004. Besides extending the scope from 1 m³ to 2 m³ of internal volume, it brought one substantive change: the type 15 classification was withdrawn. If a supplier offers a cabinet described as type 15, it is citing a classification that no longer exists in the valid standard.

Where an explosive atmosphere can form, Government Regulation No. 393/2006 Coll. applies alongside the fire decree. It transposes the European ATEX workplace directive into Slovak law.3 Spaces are divided into zones according to how often an explosive atmosphere occurs.

Assigning a zone is not an administrative formality. It decides directly what equipment may be used in the space.3

• In zone 0 or 20, equipment of category 1.
• In zone 1 or 21, equipment of category 1 or 2.
• In zone 2 or 22, equipment of category 1, 2 or 3.

The employer must have a written explosion protection document. Among other things it evidences that hazards have been identified and the explosion risk assessed, that preventive and protective measures have been adopted, that spaces have been classified, and which spaces and equipment are subject to special requirements.3

The regulation defines the zones but leaves the actual classification of a space to the site and its risk assessment. The German trade rule DGUV Regel 113-001, known as the Explosionsschutz-Regeln, offers practical help; its annex is a collection of worked examples of assigning spaces to zones.11 It is not binding in Slovakia and does not replace the explosion protection document, but it shows how to arrive at a classification for typical processes.

Personal protective equipment is the last line of protection. It is provided where the danger cannot be eliminated or limited by technical means, by collective protection or by the organisation of work.4 Once that point is reached, though, it is a hard duty.

For an explosive atmosphere the provision on antistatic protection matters most. Government Regulation No. 393/2006 Coll. states it without exceptions.

Four rules from the health and safety act and the PPE regulation come on top, and together they shape how issuing should work.

• The employer must "provide free of charge, to employees whose life or health requires it, the necessary effective personal protective equipment and keep records of its provision". Both duties sit in one sentence, so the records are not optional.5
• The employer bears the cost. "The costs of ensuring occupational health and safety must be borne by the employer; those costs must not be passed to the employee."5
• PPE should in principle be used by one employee. Where several people have to use it, the employer must ensure the item is "available to the employee whenever it is needed".4
• The list of PPE provided comes out of the risk assessment and specifies particular types of equipment for each kind of work.4

In an explosive atmosphere the training cycle is shorter than the usual three year period under the health and safety act. Practical training in using self-contained breathing apparatus and in emergency procedures is repeated at least once a year.3

Which standards PPE is chosen against

In practice the requirement for materials that do not cause electrostatic discharges is met by choosing equipment to harmonised standards. For an environment with flammable substances these three, in the versions valid in Slovakia, are the relevant ones.8

For each kind of work the PPE list should name the specific type of equipment, including the standard it is certified to. General wording such as protective clothing is, according to the labour inspectorate, one of the main reasons shortcomings are recorded.

The National Labour Inspectorate publishes an annual report on the state of occupational safety. For 2024 it records 7 888 registered accidents at work, 25 of them fatal, five more than in 2023.6

The direction is more interesting than the count. While most large inspected areas fell year on year, PPE recorded the sharpest rise in findings at 22.67%. The inspectorate also names where it sticks. The main problem is a list of effective PPE that is missing or inadequate, and difficulty in naming the specific type of equipment. Among the other findings the report lists:6

• records of issued PPE not kept, or kept wrongly,
• employees not told what dangers their PPE protects them from,
• no instruction on how to use the issued equipment correctly,
• no checks on whether the PPE is actually being used correctly.

The first point can be solved systematically. Records kept by hand on paper or in a spreadsheet are practically unsustainable in shift work and impossible to evidence during an inspection.

The European comparison shows this is a cost question, not only a legal one. According to Eurostat data for 2023, Slovakia recorded 8 027 non-fatal accidents at work, 2 961 of them in manufacturing. That is more than any other sector, at an incidence rate of 556.53 per 100 000 workers.9 The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work puts the total cost of work related accidents and illnesses in the EU at at least 476 billion euros a year.10

International prevention work outside state supervision reaches the same conclusion as the Slovak inspectorate. The Vision Zero strategy, led by the International Social Security Association, sets the safety of machines, equipment and workplaces, raising qualifications, and involving employees as three separate rules out of seven.12 Seen that way, documentation is the result of a system that works, not a substitute for one.

A site working with flammable substances has to meet four things at once that look contradictory at first: keep as little material at the workplace as possible, have protective equipment available at all times, be able to show who received it and when, and not pass the cost to the employee.

That is exactly the job for controlled issuing. A vending machine covers all these requirements at once.

• The equipment is available at any hour, including on the night shift and at weekends. That is precisely what Section 3(3) of the PPE regulation asks for.
• Every issue is tied to a named employee by card or PIN. That produces the record of PPE provision whose absence the inspectorate criticises most often.
• Controlled dispensing and a view of consumption make it possible to keep only as much material at the workplace as is needed. That helps to stay under the volume limits in the decree.
• The machine limits and records consumption; it does not charge for it. The law expressly forbids passing the cost to the employee.

For the flammables themselves in commercial packaging, aerosols and chemicals, our range has the W8 EX LIFT with fire certification and a special version of the lift mechanism. The protective equipment for working with them is covered by spiral and lift machines or cabinet machines where the items are larger.

Nine questions every site working with flammable substances should be able to answer.

Legislation is cited as in force on the date this guide was updated. Sources that are not Slovak legislation are marked in the list and are informative. This text is for information and does not replace legal advice or an assessment of a particular site.