On 25 March 1957, six European states signed the Treaty of Rome. Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands thereby laid the cornerstone for today’s European Union (EU). They founded the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). The 50th anniversary of this historic event was celebrated in 2007 with the first 2-euro joint issue of the eurozone.
To honour this important anniversary appropriately, something unprecedented in the history of euro cash was decided. On 5 May 2006, the then EU Commissioner Joaquín Almunia and Eurogroup President Jean-Claude Juncker announced that a joint special strike by all member states would appear for the first time. Right on the anniversary date of 25 March 2007, all participating countries put the coin into circulation. There was one important special rule on top of that: because this was a cross-border project, in 2007 every state was still allowed to strike its own purely national 2-euro commemorative coin in addition to the joint issue.
