20th Anniversary of Andorra's Accession to the Council of Europe

To the left, the coat of arms of Andorra, followed by the numeral '20', whose zero is styled after the Council of Europe flag. Along the top, the country name 'ANDORRA', with 'AL CONSELL D'EUROPA' on the line below. At the bottom left, the year '2014'; a diagonal line rises to the right.

Andorra's accession to the Council of Europe on 10 November 1994 was a foreign-policy watershed for the small principality in the Pyrenees. Until then, Andorra had barely taken part in Europe's multilateral institutional framework — a direct consequence of its special constitutional status as a co-principality, formally governed jointly by the Bishop of Urgell and the President of France. With its accession to the Council of Europe, Andorra committed for the first time to the European Convention on Human Rights, placing itself under the oversight of the European Court of Human Rights. For a country that had only adopted a modern constitution in 1993, this was a profound turning point: the new constitutional order had, in the first place, created the basis for ratifying the Council of Europe's conventions.

The Council of Europe, founded in 1949 and today the continent's most comprehensive political organisation with 46 member states, is not an EU institution but an independent forum for democracy, the rule of law and human rights. Andorra has been a full member ever since — alongside a gradual rapprochement with the European Union that began in 1990 with a customs agreement and today encompasses a broad package of association negotiations. Andorra has issued official euro coins since 2011, following a monetary agreement with the EU that made this possible. Andorra marked the 20th anniversary of its 1994 accession to the Council of Europe with a 2-euro commemorative coin in 2016.