25 Years of Slovenian Independence

A diagonal line divides the design. The inscription '25 LET' and the state name 'REPUBLIKA SLOVENIJA'. An excerpt — 'dočákat' dan' — from the Slovenian national anthem Zdravljica, rendered in the handwriting of its author, France Prešeren, alongside the year '2016'.

On 25 June 1991, Slovenia became the first of the Yugoslav republics to declare independence - after a decade of growing political tension between Ljubljana and Belgrade and a referendum in December 1990 in which around 88 percent of the population voted in favour of state independence. The so-called Ten-Day War, which followed immediately after the declaration of independence, ended comparatively quickly for Slovenia: the Brioni Agreement of 7 July 1991 secured the withdrawal of the Yugoslav People's Army and paved the way for international recognition. In January 1992 the European Communities recognised the new republic, and in 1993 Slovenia joined the United Nations. The process of secession differed fundamentally from that in Croatia or Bosnia and Herzegovina - militarily limited and politically settled early.

Deeply rooted in Slovenian self-understanding is the work of the poet France Prešeren (1800-1849), whose seventh stanza of "Zdravljica" serves as the national anthem. The poem, published in 1844 and initially censored under the Habsburg monarchy, sets out a humanist vision of free peoples living together in peace - a text that gained new relevance in the context of independence in the 1990s. Slovenia completed EU accession in 2004 and, in 2007, was the first of the new member states to adopt the euro. In 2016, on the 25th anniversary of the independence of the Republic of Slovenia, the country commemorated the events of 1991 and the cultural foundations on which the state is built.