35 Years of the Erasmus Programme

A blend of two defining elements of the Erasmus programme: its original intellectual inspiration — Erasmus himself — and an allegory of his influence on Europe. The former is evoked by one of the most familiar depictions of Erasmus; the latter by a network of connections that leap from beacon to beacon across the coin's surface, representing the countless intellectual and human exchanges between European students. Several of these connections form additional stars, born from the synergies between countries.

Fifth EU joint issue. All 19 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.

Portugal is among the countries for which the Erasmus programme holds particular significance: when the European Community launched the exchange programme in 1987, Portugal was only in its third year of EU membership. Participation in Erasmus was thus, from the outset, part of the country's broader opening towards Europe — after decades of isolation under the Salazar regime and the Carnation Revolution of 1974. Portuguese universities such as Coimbra, Lisbon and Porto built connections to institutions across Europe through the programme, and, in turn, students from other countries came to study at Portuguese institutions. The programme is named after the humanist Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, who taught at universities in several European countries in the 16th century, embodying an early model of cross-border knowledge exchange — an idea Portugal, with its own history as a seafaring nation and cultural bridge between Europe, Africa and the Americas, found readily relatable in its own way.

Since its founding, the programme has expanded several times: the original university exchange gradually grew into a comprehensive European education programme under the name Erasmus+, which today also includes vocational training, youth work and sport. More than ten million people in Europe have since studied, taught or trained through Erasmus; Portugal regularly accounts for a significant share of both participants and host universities. The underlying idea — openness to other languages, academic traditions and ways of life as a precondition for a shared European consciousness — has remained constant throughout. To mark the programme's 35th anniversary in 2022, all euro states honoured this milestone with a joint commemorative coin, in which Portugal took part as one of the first EU member nations of the second generation.