World of Monopoly.com

In 1999 Parker/ Hasbro took the opportunity with the introduction of the Euro to launch another special European edition. Since 1991 the EEC/EU was expanded by 3 countries, whereas the subject was raised that after 1999 another seven new countries would join. The makers of this edition had already anticipated on this by situating those countries at the beginning of the game. The most expansive properties are the capitals of those countries being member from the start. Groups that became members at the same moment are arranged according to the number of inhabitants of their capital cities.

So the first seven capitals and countries from this edition were arranged as follows on the various game boards:

Vilnius (Lithuania) - Riga (Latvia) - Sofia (Bulgaria) - Bucharest (Romania) - Warsaw (Poland) - Budapest (Hungaria), this is not the capital! - Geneva (Switserland) ..... etc.

However ..... the knowledge of geography of the designers of this game board apparently was not of a high level, because they were wrong in:

Geneva being the capital city of Switzerland

besides Switszerland has never felt the need to join the EEC/EU and that is why this country shouldn't be represented in neither of these editions.

It took two years before the "capital error" was rectified, done by Parker/Hasbro with the release of the new edition Europe, in which the correct capital Bern shows up. But still Switzerland shouldn't be among the EU countries!