Cartoonist Tomaž Lavrič was decorated with the Medal for Merits along with a singer, while the Order for Merits went to a festival of contemporary classical music and a Trieste-based author.

The Kogoj Days, a festival named after Slovenian composer Marij Kogoj (1892-1956), was honoured for its contribution to the promotion of Slovenian classical music.

More than 325 new Slovenian compositions have been performed for the first time at the festival, running in the west of the country and across the border in Italy annually since 1979.

The festival was also praised for promoting a single Slovenian cultural space, a reference to the Slovenian ethnic community in Italy.

A member of the community, Trieste-based author Miroslav Košuta, was also honoured today for his oeuvre as well as for his contribution as director of the Slovenian theatre house in Trieste in 1978-1999.

Under his guide, the theatre became a bridge between the Slovenian and Italian theatre communities, the justification of the decoration reads.

Meanwhile, Ljoba Jenče, a singer and a storyteller, won the Medal for Merits for preserving Slovenian folk heritage in the forms of poems and songs.

Cartoonist Lavrič was decorated for his work in illustration, caricature and comics in which he playfully moves from humour to realism, from social topics to science fiction, caricature to abstraction.

Lavrič, who is best known to the public in Slovenia for his weekly cartoon for the magazine Mladina, Diareja, was praised for his creative flair, humour and charm as well as provocation.

He did not attend the ceremony himself, but in the acceptance letter read at the ceremony said he understood the award as proof the authorities recognised the social role of satire.

He said he was happy that "we have a president with a sufficient sense of humour to be able to laugh, although dryly, at jokes about himself".