20 ECU - Baudouin I 40th Anniversary of Baudouin I reign

Belgium's ECU coinage of the late 1980s and early 1990s occupied an odd political space — the European Currency Unit was a basket currency used for accounting and financial settlements among EEC member states, never legal tender in any conventional sense, yet Belgium enthusiastically issued collector pieces denominated in it. This 1991 piece marks forty years since Baudouin's accession following Leopold III's controversial abdication, itself the product of the "Royal Question" that had fractured Belgian politics along linguistic and ideological lines for years.

The bimetallic format was still a relative novelty in European commemorative coinage at the time of issue.