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 Europa 1969 Vatican City, Scott 470-472 Beginning today, and continuing for the next week, the Page 2 button on the Daily Emails will direct you to a multi-part series on the Europa stamps issued by Vatican City. Today's entry is a look at the Europa stamps, how and when they started, and the start of the Vatican Post Office's participation in the program. In conjunction with these articles, the VPS website team has put together a slideshow of the Vatican Europa stamps. The button to see the slideshow is found below. If your collection has additional material that would enhance our presentation of the Europa series and could be included in this slideshow, please get in touch with the website team. The Europa Stamps Each year since 1956, European countries have issued sets of stamps that have become known as the Europa series. The stamps are now issued by the member countries of the PostEurop Association, and each year’s issue is dedicated to a specific theme. This article will give a brief history of the Europa series of stamps and will provide an introduction into a series of articles which will focus on Vatican City’s participation in the Europa stamp program. The stamps we recognize as the “Europa” issues (sometimes referred to as “Europa-CEPT” prior to 1993), were first issued by the postal administrations of member countries within the European Communities (from 1956–1959) and the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations, or “CEPT” (from 1960 to 1992). In 1993, PostEurop was established and took over the management of the Europa stamp program. Currently, PostEurop has 54 member countries. Vatican City’s postal administration, Poste Vaticane, formally joined PostEurop in 2012. The first Europa postage stamps were issued on September 15, 1956, by the postal administrations of the six founding members of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC): Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. The stamps featured a common design of a stylized tower made up of the letters of the word "EUROPA", surrounded by construction scaffolding. From 1956 through 1973, (except for 1957), the Europa stamps featured a common design. Starting in 1960, the initials "CEPT" were added to the joint issue stamps. In some cases, countries deviated from the practice of using a common design and instead just displayed the word "EUROPA". From 1974, the use of a common design was replaced with that of a common theme. With the advent of PostEurop’s management of the series, a new, stylized Europa logo was introduced and is found on all stamps since 1993. The Europa stamps are intended to show the cooperation between the postal administrations within the organization. They hope to build awareness of the common roots of the countries, as well as their culture and history. The desire is to foster a sense of closer integration and cooperation between the countries. The Wikipedia reference below provides a detailed history of the Europa stamps and lists the themes for the stamps that have been issued over the last 60-plus years. The Europa stamps have proven to be popular among collectors, either as a specific topic for collection or to focus on the topics featured each year. Vatican City and Europa Stamps The first Europa stamp set issued by Vatican City came in 1969. The set is shown at the top of the page and followed the common design used by the CEPT member countries that year. The set was issued on the tenth anniversary of the founding of CEPT. It was not until 1993 that the release of Europa stamps became an annual event for the city-state. Over the next week, the VPS Website Team will be releasing Page 2 entries to provide some background and history for the Europa stamps issued by Vatican City, showing how the Vatican has been able to represent the common Europa theme each year. Be sure to check it out the articles on Page 2, which will review all the Vatican City Europa stamps through the latest issue in 2024. REFERENCES: Technical Details: Scott Catalogue - 470-472 Date Issued - 28 April 1969 Face Value - €1.25 Perforations - 13 Printer - The Italian State Printing Works |
