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, the largest enlargement round in the history of the European Union to date took effect with ten new member states. Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta and Cyprus henceforth belonged to the Community, raising its membership from 15 to 25. This followed years of reform measured against the so-called Copenhagen criteria: candidate countries had to demonstrate democratic institutions, the rule of law and a functioning market economy. For the Central and Eastern European states, accession marked the institutional conclusion of a transformation that had begun in 1989 with the end of communist rule.

Portugal looks back on its own accession experience, which shapes its understanding of this step: the country joined the European Communities in 1986 together with Spain — likewise after the end of a dictatorship and as part of a democratic new beginning. This parallel makes Portugal's perspective on the eastern enlargement especially tangible. Economically, Portugal, like the other existing member states, benefited from the growing internal market, which gained considerably in breadth through the ten new economies. Twenty-five years after this historic enlargement step, Portugal marks in 2029 with a commemorative coin an event that decisively shaped the political and economic architecture of today's Europe.