50 Centimes French text

Belgium maintained two parallel coin series throughout the twentieth century — one with French text, one with Dutch — to satisfy the country's entrenched linguistic divide. This arrangement, formalized across multiple currency reforms, meant the mint produced essentially duplicate issues for every denomination, a political accommodation that added measurable cost to Belgian coinage for decades.

The series ran until euro adoption rendered it obsolete in 2002, making the final years of issue purely transitional strikes with negligible circulation.