European Union officials have been accused of “political geography” after Turkey, but not the Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova, disappeared from a map of Europe designed for new euro coins.

A common design for the “tails side” of euro coins is to be rolled out in 2008 with an updated graphic showing an enlarged EU and new countries, such as Cyprus, that are joining the single currency.

Papers given to Euro-MPs under Brussels open information rules show that the European Commission proposed a standard format map of Europe extending as far as the Caspian Sea and including Turkey.

But, following the intervention of unnamed national governments, Ankara was short-changed in the final design as Cyprus was moved hundreds of miles west, to rest near Crete, while Turkey was cut from the map altogether.

Marco Cappato, an Italian Liberal Euro-MP, is angry that Turkey, an EU membership hopeful, has been removed from a design that includes Moldava and Belarus, countries with poor human rights records.

He believes the omission is a deliberate “provocation” by euro zone members, such as France, who are hostile to Turkish EU entry.

“They have deliberately and secretly wiped Turkey off the map. To come up with this apparently geographical design they were obliged to put Cyprus 500 kilometres west of where it actually is,” he said.

“It is politics not geography to depict non-member states of the EU, including authoritarian, even dictatorial, regimes, and not Turkey, with which membership negotiations have begun.”

Current euro coins use an accurate map based graphic to depict the 15 countries that were EU members in 1999, before the Union grew to its current 27 members.

A Brussels spokeswoman refused to make “pointless” comment on differences between Commission’s original map and the final design.