1 Euro

Latvia joined the Eurozone on 1 January 2014, making it the eighteenth member state to adopt the common currency. The timing was politically deliberate — Riga had been pushing for accession since 2004 EU entry, but the 2008 financial crisis forced a severe IMF-backed austerity programme that delayed qualification by nearly a decade. The crisis shrank Latvian GDP by roughly 25% in two years, one of the steepest peacetime contractions ever recorded in Europe.

These coins were struck at the Latvijas Monētu Kaltuves facility in Rīga — one of the few eurozone member states to mint its own national-side euro coins domestically from the outset.