At the beginning of 1990, the artist Josef Skalník was approached as one of the members of President Václav Havel’s collegium to propose designs of the new state symbols of the Czech and Slovak Federative Republic. The quartered French shield contains the state symbols of the Czech and Slovak Republics respecting their historical traditions – the Czech royal lion and the three peaks with a double cross. Several months of negotiations on the form of the State emblems resulted in the approval of Act No 102 on Constitutional Symbols of 20 April 1990.