25 Years of EU Enlargement

25th Anniversary of the 2004 EU Enlargement

Sixth joint issue of the European Union. All 21 eurozone states issue a coin with the same design on varying dates. The coins differ only in the inscription, which appears in the respective national language.

For Luxembourg, one of the six founding members of the European Communities, the eastern enlargement of 1 May 2004 was no abstract geopolitical shift but a directly tangible change. With the simultaneous accession of ten states — including Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, the three Baltic republics, as well as Malta and Cyprus — the EU grew from 15 to 25 members, becoming the largest enlargement round in its history at that time. For the small state of Luxembourg, which holds a special institutional role in the Union as the seat of several EU institutions such as the Court of Justice, the Court of Auditors and the Secretariat-General of the European Parliament, this meant a substantial increase in administrative workload, multilingualism and political dynamism within the European bodies.

At the European level, the enlargement completed a process that had begun politically with the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989: the institutional reunification of a continent divided for decades. The new member states had undergone profound economic, rule-of-law and democratic reforms ahead of accession, reforms known as the Copenhagen criteria that set the standard for any EU accession prospect. Luxembourg was a reliable advocate of enlargement policy during this phase and, as Council presidency in the second half of 2005, contributed to consolidating the enlarged Union. With a commemorative coin, Luxembourg marks in 2029 the 25th anniversary of this accession, which continues to shape economic ties, freedom of movement for workers and political cooperation in Europe today.