25 Years of EU Enlargement

25th Anniversary of the 2004 EU Enlargement

Sixth joint issue of the European Union. All 21 euro-area states are issuing a coin with the same design on varying dates. The coins differ only in the inscription, which appears in each country's national language.

On 1 May 2004, Latvia joined the European Union together with nine other states — the largest enlargement round in the history of the Community up to that point. For Latvia, this step meant far more than a date in foreign policy: it marked the provisional conclusion of a transformation that had begun with the restoration of independence in 1991. After decades of Soviet occupation, the rebuilding of state structures and extensive economic reforms, the country met the so-called Copenhagen criteria and thereby became part of a shared legal and economic area to which it had been programmatically committed since the end of the Cold War. Accession opened the European internal market, freedom of travel and access to EU funding programmes to Latvian citizens — changes that profoundly shaped everyday life in the country.

Latvia is one of the three Baltic republics annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940, whose independence Western states never formally recognised. This historical continuity gave the 2004 EU accession a symbolic dimension in Riga that went beyond mere integration policy: it was understood as a return to the European community of states to which the country had always culturally and geopolitically belonged. Since then, Latvia has introduced the euro, joined NATO and plays an active role in European foreign and security policy. On the 25th anniversary of the EU enlargement, Latvia marks in 2029 with a commemorative coin an accession that meant a fundamental repositioning for the country within modern Europe.