100 ECU - Beatrix J. R. Thorbecke

This piece honors Johan Rudolf Thorbecke, the liberal statesman who drafted the Dutch constitution of 1848 — a revision that fundamentally shifted power away from the monarchy toward an elected parliament, making William II a constitutional rather than absolute sovereign. The reform came during a year when revolutions were toppling governments across Europe; the Netherlands avoided that fate largely because Thorbecke's draft was already in motion.

The ECU series issued by the Royal Dutch Mint in the 1990s occupied an odd legal space: denominated in a currency that existed only as a unit of account, never as circulating tender in the Netherlands.