The Government of the Republic of Slovenia gave their consent and adopted the decision on 28 July 2005 to submit the selected design proposals for the national side of the Slovene euro coins to ECOFIN (Economic and Financial Committee) - Coins Sub-Committee, which acknowledged the compliance of the Slovene design proposals with European legislation on 5 October 2005.
[3] The use of the Prince's Stone (Slovene: Knežji kamen, German: Fürstenstein) on the 2-cent coin caused a minor political stir in the Austrian State of Carinthia.
The stone, a fragment of an ancient Roman column from nearby Virunum that was used in the ritual of installing the princes of Carantania and later of the Duchy of Carinthia, is kept in a museum in Klagenfurt (Slovene: Celovec), the Carinthian capital, where it is also considered a historical icon of the state.
The Carinthian state government (headed by governor Jörg Haider) issued a resolution of protest on 25 October 2005, which was rejected as "not to be taken seriously" by the then Slovenian foreign minister, Dimitrij Rupel.
On academic grounds, for instance, Peter Štih, professor of history at the Ljubljana University and member of the Slovene Academy of Sciences, argued that the Prince's Stone cannot be considered a Slovenian but rather a Carinthian historic symbol.