25 Years of EU Enlargement

25th Anniversary of the 2004 EU Enlargement.

Sixth joint issue of the European Union. All 21 eurozone states are issuing a coin with the same design on different dates. The coins differ only in the legend, which appears in the respective national language.

The EU enlargement of 1 May 2004 was the largest accession in the history of the European Union: ten states — including Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, the three Baltic republics, as well as Malta and Cyprus — joined the Community simultaneously, raising the number of member states from 15 to 25. This step completed, at the institutional level, what had begun politically with the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989: overcoming the division of Europe. For the new member states, accession marked the conclusion of profound economic and rule-of-law reforms known as the Copenhagen criteria, which form the basis of any EU membership.

As a founding member of the European Communities and host to central EU institutions in Brussels, Belgium followed the eastern enlargement from a particularly exposed vantage point. The admission of the Central and Eastern European countries significantly strengthened the common internal market and opened up new economic and cultural ties across the continent. Twenty-five years after this historic accession, Belgium marks the anniversary in 2029 with a commemorative coin recalling an event that permanently reshaped Europe's geopolitical map and whose effects on free movement, trade and political cooperation are still felt today.