50 Years of the Treaty of Rome

At the centre, the treaty signed by the six founding members, against the backdrop of Michelangelo's star-patterned piazza on the Capitoline Hill in Rome, where the treaty was signed on 25 March 1957. Directly above the treaty, the word 'Europa' in the respective language. Above, the commemorative occasion; below, the name of the issuing state in its national language(s) and the year 2007.

First joint issue of the European Union. 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 legend, which appears in the respective national language.

On 25 March 1957, the foreign ministers of six European states — Belgium, the Federal Republic of Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands — signed two treaties on Rome's Capitoline Hill that lifted Western European integration to a new level. One established the European Economic Community (EEC), the other the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). Both agreements built on the Treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community, concluded three years earlier, and considerably broadened the shared framework: tariff reduction, free movement of goods, a common market, and coordinated economic policy became declared goals. The choice of location was deliberately symbolic: the Palazzo dei Senatori on the Capitoline Hill, surrounded by Michelangelo's star-patterned pavement, stood for continuity and state dignity.

Belgium was among the founding states from the outset, and as host to the later European Parliament, Commission, and Council, played a central institutional role in the Community's development. The Treaties of Rome created the framework from which, over the decades, the European Communities first emerged and finally, with the Maastricht Treaty of 1993, the European Union. To mark the 50th anniversary of the signing in 2007, all euro states jointly issued a 2-euro commemorative coin — one of the very few European joint issues in which Belgium, too, took part.