50 Years of the Treaties of Rome

Centre: the treaty document, signed by the six founding members, set against the background of Michelangelo's star-patterned paving on the Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome, where it was signed on 25 March 1957. Directly above the document: the word "Europe" in the national language. Above: the commemorative inscription; below: the issuing state in the national language and the year 2007.

First EU joint issue. All 13 eurozone states issued a coin with the same design on the anniversary date of 25 March 2007. The coins differ only in the inscription, which appears in the respective national language.

On 25 March 1957, the foreign ministers and heads of government of six states — the Federal Republic of Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg — signed two treaties on Rome's Capitoline Hill that would permanently reshape Western Europe's political order. These so-called Treaties of Rome arose from the recognition that the Coal and Steel Community, founded in 1951, was not enough on its own to overcome economic dependencies and political tensions in the long run. The signing took place on the Capitoline Square, redesigned from the 16th century onward according to a plan by Michelangelo — a deliberately chosen location of great symbolic weight, bringing together European history and Renaissance architecture. The two treaties gave rise to the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), regarded as the seeds of today's European Union.

At the time the treaties were signed, Austria was not yet a member of the emerging European community; it had only shortly before, in 1955, regained full sovereignty through the State Treaty and committed itself to permanent neutrality. Austria did not join the European Union until 1995, following a referendum with a clear majority in favour. Since then, Austria has been fully embedded in the European structures whose legal origins lie in the Treaties of Rome. To mark the 50th anniversary of the signing in 2007, all euro states jointly issued a 2-euro commemorative coin — one of the rare Europe-wide joint issues in which every country uses the same design.