35 Years of the Erasmus Programme

A blend of two central elements of the Erasmus programme: its original intellectual inspiration — Erasmus himself — and an allegory of his influence across Europe. The former is represented by one of the most recognised portraits of Erasmus; the latter by a web of connections passing from beacon to beacon across the coin, evoking the countless intellectual and personal exchanges between European students. Some of these connections form additional stars, born from the synergies between participating countries.

Fifth joint issue of the European Union. All 19 eurozone states are issuing a coin with the same design on varying dates. The coins differ only in their inscriptions, which appear in the respective national language.

The Erasmus programme was launched in 1987 as a modest higher-education initiative of the European Community — in its first year, only 3,244 students from eleven countries took part. Its namesake is the Dutch humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam, whose portrait was captured by Hans Holbein the Younger and other contemporaries, and who is regarded as the prototype of the travelling, cross-border-thinking scholar. Erasmus of Rotterdam lived and taught in Basel, Louvain, Paris, Oxford and Cambridge — a European wandering life avant la lettre that gave the programme its guiding vision. His major work, In Praise of Folly, was written in 1509 while travelling, exemplifying how intellectual exchange functions across national borders.

By 2022, more than twelve million people had taken part in Erasmus and its successor programmes; since its expansion into Erasmus+ in 2014, it has also encompassed vocational training, school partnerships and youth projects alongside higher education mobility. Spain is one of the most active participating countries: Spanish universities traditionally send and host particularly large numbers of Erasmus students, and Madrid and Barcelona are among the most popular host destinations in Europe. To mark the programme's 35th anniversary in 2022, all euro states honoured this transnational education project with a joint issue, one that has made the idea of a European knowledge community tangible since its founding.