The history of the Slovak Republic and its predecessor the Czechoslovak Republic has a close relationship with aviation. General Milan Rastislav Štefánik, an important figure in the creation of Czechoslovakia, was also a pilot and he died in a plane crash near Bratislava on May 4, 1919. Czechoslovakia was also a signatory of the first “Convention Relating to the Regulation of Aerial Navigation” (also known as “The Paris Convention”) in 1919.
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) will celebrate its 75th anniversary in 2019. It was created to solve many of the practical problems related to the gradual expansion of the aviation sector. The discussions leading to the creation of the ICAO took place at the Chicago Convention, held in 1944, which dealt with, among other things, the freedoms of the air, i.e. there were five fundamental rights of international civil aviation and the Conference extended the legal aspects of the Paris Convention and was responsible for the creation of a new permanent international organization – the ICAO, which replaced the International Commission for Air Navigation and in 1947 became a specialized agency of the United Nations. Czechoslovakia, despite the situation during the Second World War, was a signatory of the Chicago Convention from the beginning and a founding member of the ICAO. After the break-up of Czechoslovakia, the Slovak Republic, as an independent state, became a member of the ICAO on January 1, 1993. The Slovak Republic is a member of the Central European Rotation Group (CERG) within the ICAO.
This stamp commemorates the links between the Slovak Republic and aviation from its early stages to the present day and also highlights the fact that the Slovak Republic was, albeit in its previous form, one of the founding members of the ICAO, an organization which is the largest global force in civil aviation and which celebrates its 75th anniversary in 2019.
                                                                                                                                                                                                   Richard Melíšek