35 Years of the Erasmus Programme

A blend of two core elements of the Erasmus programme: its original intellectual inspiration — Erasmus himself — and an allegory of his influence across Europe. The former is represented by one of the most familiar portraits of Erasmus; the latter by a beam of connections crossing the coin from beacon to beacon, evoking the countless intellectual and human exchanges between European students. Some of these connections form additional stars, symbolising the synergies arising from collaboration between countries.

Fifth European Union joint issue. All 19 eurozone states are issuing a coin with the same design on various dates. The coins differ only in their inscriptions, which appear in the respective national language.

Erasmus of Rotterdam was no stay-at-home scholar — he spent much of his life travelling between Europe's intellectual centres, taught in Oxford and Cambridge, lived in Paris, Basel and Leuven, and maintained an extensive network of correspondents across the continent. For him, this mobility was not a circumstance but a programme: knowledge, he believed, could only be sharpened through exchange, not within the confines of a single university. The EU exchange programme named after him picks up exactly this idea — since 1987, Erasmus has enabled students to complete part of their studies at universities in other European countries, with millions of participants over the decades since.

Finland is among the countries where higher education has traditionally held high social standing. Finnish universities have been closely tied to national identity-building since the founding phase of the modern education system in the 19th century — the University of Helsinki, for instance, was moved to Helsingfors in 1828 and long remained the country's only university. Participation in the Erasmus programme fits seamlessly into this self-understanding: in Finland, international exchange is regarded not as an add-on but as a structural part of a modern university education. Erasmus+ has since expanded the original exchange programme to include vocational training, youth work and sport. To mark the Erasmus programme's 35th anniversary in 2022, all euro states — including Finland — issued a joint commemorative coin.