25 Years of EU Enlargement

25th Anniversary of the 2004 EU Enlargement.

Sixth EU joint issue. All 21 eurozone states are releasing a coin with this design on various dates. The coins differ only in the inscription, which appears in the respective national language.

On 1 May 2004, ten states joined the European Union simultaneously — an unprecedented event in the history of European integration. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, as well as Malta and Cyprus, became members of the Union in a single step. The enlargement round increased the number of EU member states from 15 to 25 and grew the population by around 75 million people. For many of the new members, especially the Central and Eastern European countries, accession marked the end of a long rapprochement process that began after the end of the Cold War and required substantial reforms in administration, the judiciary and the economy.

The Netherlands was among the founding members of the European Economic Community of 1957 and had traditionally been an open voice in the enlargement debate — even though, just a year after accession, the Dutch public showed clear scepticism in the 2005 referendum on the EU constitution. This tension between openness to enlargement and domestic EU criticism continues to shape Dutch European policy today. With the 2029 commemorative issue, the Netherlands marks the 25th anniversary of the largest enlargement round in the history of the EU.