The European Central Bank (ECB) has unveiled proposed motifs for the next generation of Euro banknotes, centered on European nature and culture — including rivers, birds, and abstract landscapes — replacing the current architectural themes.
Public submissions during the consultation phase have included proposals such as Miguel de Cervantes, Marie Curie, and Leonardo da Vinci, reflecting citizen interest in honoring cultural icons. The ECB has not endorsed any individual portraits, emphasizing pan-European symbolism and inclusivity.
I’m not sure if I like the idea of putting the faces of specific people on the banknotes. Wasn’t the whole reason of the fake architectural styles and bridges on the notes, to not give preferential treatment to any one country?
Now they are proposing specific people from specific countries:
So what about representation for the other countries?
As a dual Polish-Spanish citizen I’m getting double representation: Cervantes and Maria Skłodowska-Curie. All I can say to all the French, Dutch, Czech and other nationals without any representation is: you should have produced more culturally significant people :P
With 27 member states and only 6 bank notes, you cannot represent every country no matter how many culturally significant people each country has. It forces you to pick at most six, and the rest is simply not represented. That is why the original notes represented the general idea of architectural styles and not specific real-world examples of those architectural styles.
The proposal for landscapes, rivers and birds seems like a much better one, in my opinion.
Or do what they do with coins and just have slightly different banknote designs, one for each country
Exactly. Why can’t we have this? It would be so much fun to have different country bills.
The UK actually does this- Northern Ireland and Scotland have their own banknotes. (Some Northern Ireland ones are even vertical!) and you can maybe count the Isle of Man, Jersey, and Guernsey, however they do officially use a different currency although it’s still a “pound” and pegged to British pounds.
To be fair, I think rivers and landscapes are equally flawed. Rivers are an extremely boring topic and landscapes tend to be inside a single country.
Birds are the best in my opinion.
I’m just joshing. Of course it’s a stupid idea. They should use neutral images or let each country design their own version of the bill.
That’s a peculiar combination. There’s dozens of us!
People escaping Poland end up in many different places but Spain is definitely not that common.
It has been 25 years, countries are much more integrated now than they were back then when the first notes were designed. So it should not be as problematic as it would have been back then. Plus the coins continue to have the national symbols.
But yes, it still is controversial nonetheless.
With the extreme right on the rise, I think the timing isn’t ideal to feed into nationalist pride.