50 Years of the Treaties of Rome

At the centre, the treaty document signed by the six founding members, set against the backdrop of the star-shaped paving of the Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome — designed by Michelangelo — where the Treaty was signed on 25 March 1957. The word “Europa” in the respective language appears directly above the document. Above: the commemorative occasion; below: the issuing country in the relevant language(s) and the year 2007.

First European Union 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 their inscriptions, which appear in the respective national language.

On 25 March 1957, the foreign ministers of the six founding states — West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg — signed the treaties establishing the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) on Rome's Capitoline Hill. The choice of venue was deliberately symbolic: the star-patterned paving of the Piazza del Campidoglio, designed by Michelangelo, represents Rome's historical legacy as the heart of European civilisation. The Treaties of Rome created the institutional foundation for a common market with free movement of goods, people, services, and capital — an economic-policy foundation on which the later European Union was built. They gave the European Coal and Steel Community, in existence since 1952, a far broader basis for integration.

Finland was not part of the integration project of the Treaties of Rome from the beginning — it did not join the European Union until 1995, and did not introduce euro cash until 2002. Finland had observed the 1957 signing from a different geopolitical position: during the Cold War, it maintained a policy of active neutrality that ruled out membership in Western alliances until well after the end of the Cold War. This makes it all the more significant that, since joining the EU, Finland has become fully embedded in the framework of integration established by the Treaties of Rome and helps shape the eurozone. To mark the 50th anniversary of the Treaties of Rome in 2007, all euro states jointly took part in an issue commemorating this founding moment.