50 Years of the Treaty of Rome

At the centre: the treaty signed by the six founding members, set against Michelangelo's star-shaped paving of the Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome, where the treaty was signed on 25 March 1957. Directly above the treaty text: the word "Europa" in the national language. Above: the commemorative occasion; below: the issuing state in the national language(s) and the year 2007.

In 2008 a retrospective set was issued comprising the Luxembourg €2 commemorative coins of 2004–2008 (LU-04 G1, LU-05 G2, LU-06 G2, LU-07 G1, LU-07 G2, LU-08 G1).

First joint issue of the European Union. All 13 eurozone states issued a coin with the same design on 25 March 2007. The coins differ only in the inscription, which appears in the respective national language.

On 25 March 1957, representatives of Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands signed two treaties on Rome's Capitoline Hill establishing the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). The signing location was chosen deliberately: the Piazza del Campidoglio, whose paving was designed according to a plan by Michelangelo, was meant to lend the act historical weight. For Luxembourg, the signing was no mere formality but the logical continuation of a history of integration that had already begun with the Benelux customs union and the Coal and Steel Community in the mid-1940s and early 1950s respectively. The Grand Duchy was among the six founding states, since then also referred to as "the Six."

The Treaties of Rome created the legal basis for the common market, progressively dismantling tariffs and trade barriers between member states. The EEC gave rise, through several treaty revisions, to today's European Union; the Economic and Monetary Union established by the Maastricht Treaty of 1993 is directly rooted in this tradition. To mark the 50th anniversary of the signing in 2007, all euro states issued a joint commemorative coin — one of the few joint issues in the euro system in which every country mints the same design, varying only on the country-specific side.