Euro banknotes are the banknotes of the euro, the currency of the eurozone (see European Union) and have been in circulation since 2002. They are issued by the national central banks of the euro area or the European Central Bank (ECB). Denominations of notes range from €5 to €500 and, unlike euro coins, the design is identical across the whole of the eurozone, although they are issued and printed in various member states.
Common to all notes are the European flag, the initials of the European Central Bank in five versions (BCE, ECB, EZB, ΕΚΤ, EKP), a map of Europe on the back, the name "euro" in both Latin and Greek script ("ΕΥΡΩ") and the signature of the current president of the ECB. The 12 stars from the European Flag are also incorporated into every note.
The euro banknote designs were chosen from 44 proposals in a design competition, launched by The Council of the European Monetary Institute (EMI) on 12 February 1996. The winning entry, created by Robert Kalina from the Oesterreichische Nationalbank, was selected on 3 December 1996.
The following member overseas territories are shown: the Azores, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Madeira, Martinique, Réunion, Saint Pierre and Miquelon and the Canary Islands. Cyprus and Malta are not shown, as they only joined the EU in 2004; also Malta is too small to be shown, with the minimum size for depiction being 400 km2.
These designs use the Duisenberg signature, which has since been replaced by the signature of Jean-Claude Trichet, the current president of the ECB.
Euro banknotes increase in size with increasing denominations, which helps both the visually impaired and the blind. The predominant colouring of the notes alternates between “warm” and “cool” hues in adjacent denominations (see the chart above), making it still harder to confuse two similar denominations for those who can see the colour. The printing of the denominations is intaglio printing, which allows the ink to be felt by sensitive fingers, allowing some people to distinguish the printed denominations by touch alone. Lower denominations (5, 10, 20) have smooth bands along one side of the note containing holograms; higher denominations have smooth, square patches with holograms. Finally, the €200 and €500 notes have distinctive tactile patterns along the edges of the notes: the €200 note has vertical lines running from the bottom centre to the right-hand corner, and the €500 note has diagonal lines running down the right-hand edge.
Although there have been other currencies pre-dating the euro that were specifically designed in similar ways (different sizes, colours, and ridges) to aid the visually impaired, the introduction of the euro constitutes the first time that authorities have consulted associations representing the blind before, rather than after, the release of the currency.
Still, between the official descriptions and independent discoveries made by observant users, it is thought that the euro notes include at least thirty different security features. These include:
In the case of the €50 notes and higher, the band is replaced with a holographic decal.
Alternatively, substituting the letter with its ASCII value makes the resulting number exactly divisible by 9. Taking the same example, Z10708476264: the ASCII code for Z is 90, so the resulting number is 9010708476264. Dividing by 9 yields a remainder of 0. [Using the divisibility rule again, the result can be checked speedily since the addition of all digits gives 54; 5 + 4 = 9—so the number is divisible by 9, or 9010708476264 modulo 9 is 0].
{| border="2" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; border: 1px #aaa solid; border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 95%;" |+Manchester code |- style="background:#CCCCCC" ! Note !!Barcode !! Manchester |- ||€5||0110 10||100 |- ||€10||0101 10||110 |- ||€20||1010 1010||0000 |- ||€50||0110 1010||1000 |- ||€100||0101 1010||1100 |- ||€200||0101 0110||1110 |- ||€500||0101 0101||1111 |} (looked at from the reverse, a dark bar is 1, a bright bar 0)
In 2003, 551,287 counterfeit euro notes and 26,191 fake euro coins were removed from EU circulation. In 2004, French police seized fake €10 and €20 notes with a total face value of around €1.8 million from two laboratories and estimated that 145,000 notes had already entered circulation. Each year between 2003 and 2007 between 500,000 and 600,000 counterfeit notes were removed from circulation, although this is a very small proportion of the 12 billion notes in circulation.
The European Central Bank (ECB) said in July 2008, that the amount of fake euro banknotes was on the rise, with the amount seized jumping more than 15% in the first six months of 2008. It said most were bogus €50 and €20 notes; although high quality €200 and €500 notes are also being made.
The first character of the serial number is a letter which uniquely identifies the country that issues the note. The remaining 11 characters are numbers which, when calculated their digital root, give a checksum also particular to that country. Because of the arithmetic of the check-sum, consecutively-issued banknotes are not numbered sequentially, but rather, "consecutive" banknotes are 9 digits apart.
The W, K and J codes have been reserved for the EU member states currently not participating in the euro, while the R prefix is reserved for a state within the Eurozone that, at present, do not issue euro banknotes.
Country codes are alphabetised according to the countries' names in the official language of each country, but reversed:
{| border="2" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; border: 1px #aaa solid; border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 95%; text-align:center;" |+National identification codes |- style="background:#CCCCCC" ! rowspan=2 | Code ! colspan=2 | Country ! rowspan=2 | Checksum(1) |- style="background:#CCCCCC" ! in English ! in official language(s) |- |Z | style="text-align:left;" | Belgium | style="text-align:left;" | België/Belgique/Belgien |9 |- |Y | style="text-align:left;" | Greece | style="text-align:left;" | Ελλάδα [Ellada] |1 |- |X | style="text-align:left;" | Germany | style="text-align:left;" | Deutschland |2 |- |(W)(2) | style="text-align:left;" | (Denmark) | style="text-align:left;" | Danmark |(3) |- |V | style="text-align:left;" | Spain | style="text-align:left;" | España |4 |- |U | style="text-align:left;" | France | style="text-align:left;" | France |5 |- |T | style="text-align:left;" | Ireland | style="text-align:left;" | Éire/Ireland |6 |- |S | style="text-align:left;" | Italy | style="text-align:left;" | Italia |7 |- |(R) | style="text-align:left;" | (Luxembourg) | style="text-align:left;" | Luxembourg/Luxemburg/Lëtzebuerg |(8) |- |(Q) | style="text-align:left;" colspan="3" | Not used |- |P | style="text-align:left;" | Netherlands | style="text-align:left;" | Nederland |1 |- |(O) | style="text-align:left;" colspan="3" | Not used |- |N | style="text-align:left;" | Austria | style="text-align:left;" | Österreich |3 |- |M | style="text-align:left;" | Portugal | style="text-align:left;" | Portugal |4 |- |L | style="text-align:left;" | Finland | style="text-align:left;" | Suomi/Finland |5 |- |(K)(2) | style="text-align:left;" | (Sweden) | style="text-align:left;" | Sverige |(6) |- |(J)(2) | style="text-align:left;" | (United Kingdom) | style="text-align:left;" | United Kingdom |(7) |- |(I) | style="text-align:left;" colspan="3" | Not used |- |H | style="text-align:left;" | Slovenia | style="text-align:left;" | Slovenija |9 |- |G | style="text-align:left;" | Cyprus | style="text-align:left;" | Κύπρος [Kypros]/Kıbrıs |1 |- |F | style="text-align:left;" | Malta | style="text-align:left;" | Malta |2 |- |E | style="text-align:left;" | Slovakia | style="text-align:left;" | Slovensko |3 |- |D | style="text-align:left;" | Estonia | style="text-align:left;" | Eesti |4 |- |C | style="text-align:left;" | | style="text-align:left;" | | |- |B | style="text-align:left;" | | style="text-align:left;" | | |- |A | style="text-align:left;" | | style="text-align:left;" | | |- |} (1) checksum of the 11 digits without the letter (2) Denmark, the United Kingdom and Sweden presently do not use the Euro, but still have these serial number prefixes reserved.
The notes of Luxembourg currently use the prefix belonging to the country where they were printed.
Although the Slovenian letter had been reserved since the eurozone enlargement in January 2007, the country initially used previously issued banknotes issued from other member states. The first banknotes bearing the "H" letter, produced in France specifically on behalf of Slovenia, were witnessed no sooner than April 2008. The 'Cypriot banknotes' (G) appeared in circulation in November 2009, whereas, those from Malta (F) appeared 3 months later (February 2010). Slovakian notes (E) first appeared in October 2010.
It seems from that further country codes are assigned in reverse order from the last assigned code "J" for the UK, according to the time a country joins the Eurozone. When two or more countries join at the same time, the same rule is followed as with the initial assignments of country codes, i.e. the country codes are alphabetised according to the countries' names in the official language of each country, but reversed. "H" was assigned to Slovenia which joined the Eurozone in 2007 following "J" which was the last letter assigned so far, to the UK. Then when Cyprus and Malta joined in 2008, "G" was assigned to Cyprus (Κύπρος [Kypros] in Greek, Kıbrıs in Turkish, the island's two official languages both starting with the letter K), "F" was assigned to Malta and "E" was assigned for Slovakia. The latest eurozone member, Estonia, was assigned the letter "D". No banknote so far uses the Estonian identification code, since Estonia borrowed its banknotes from Finland and Germany.
It has been suggested that, should the prefixes change to two characters, the code should be the state's ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code (e.g., EE for Estonia, DE for Germany, IT for Italy).
The initial design of the euro with the 2002 signature of Wim Duisenberg, has been issued in each of the 7 denominations by each of the NCBs of Finland, Portugal, Austria, the Netherlands, Italy, Ireland, France, Spain, Germany, Greece and Belgium, with the exception of the €200 and €500 banknotes from Portugal and the €200 banknote from Ireland. Thus, there are 74 country/denomination varieties of the banknotes with the Duisenberg signature.
After the initial introduction of the euro by these eleven NCBs, in 2002, each NCB was tasked with issuing only a subset of the denominations; for example, only 4 NCBs continued to issue the €50 note for several years thereafter. This decentralised pooling scheme means that the NCBs have to exchange the denominations issued in different countries prior to issue, and often source the banknotes they issue from multiple printers. This also means that some country/signature combinations are much scarcer than others; specifically the Duisenberg signatures of the €200 note from Finland, the €100 note from Portugal, €100 and €500 notes from Ireland and €200 and €500 notes from Greece. Also, the banknotes issued subsequent to 2003, carrying the signature of J.C. Trichet are not found in every denomination from every country. As of the end of 2007, only 30 of the 77 possible combinations of banknotes with the Trichet signature were known, but additional combinations continue to be released, along with incremental banknotes issued in 2008 by the NCB of Slovenia, carrying the serial prefix letter "H." And later also notes for Cyprus (G), Malta (F) and Slovakia (E) were issued.
Banknotes are printed in sheets, with different printers using different sheet sizes, and sheets of higher denominations, which are larger in size, would have fewer banknotes printed per sheet. For example, the two German printers print €5 banknotes in sheets of 60 (10 rows, designated "A" through "J" and six columns), the sheets for €10 banknotes have 54 banknotes (nine rows, six columns), and for €20 banknotes have 45 banknotes (nine rows, five columns).
The printer code need not coincide with the country code, i.e. notes issued by a particular country may have been printed in another country. The printers include commercial printers as well as national printers, some of whom have been privatized, who previously produced national notes prior to the adoption of the euro. There is one former or current national printer in each of the note-issuing country, with the exception of Germany, where the former East German and West German printers now produce euro banknotes. There are also two printers identified in France, F. C. Oberthur, a private printer, and the Bank of France printing works, and also in the United Kingdom; Thomas De La Rue, a major private printer, and the Bank of England printing house, which currently does not produce euro banknotes.
{| border="2" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; border: 1px #aaa solid; border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 95%;" |+Printer identification codes |- style="background:#CCCCCC" !Code !Printer !Location !Country !NCB(s) produced for |- |
Current issues do not reflect the expansion of the EU to 27 member states (Cyprus is not depicted on current notes as the map does not extend far enough East; Malta is also missing as it does not meet the current series' minimum size for depiction
Four more abbreviations of the European Central Bank name will have to be included on the banknotes: the Bulgarian (ЕЦБ), Hungarian (EKB), Maltese (BĊE) and Polish (EBC).
Only the Cyrillic rendering of the name "euro" (ЕВРO) will be added to the new series, since it is ECB policy that the name euro be used in all countries using Latin script. See the article Linguistic issues concerning the euro for more information on this discussion.
The first denomination from the new series will be issued in January 2013/4.http://wienerzeitung.at/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabID=3924&Alias;=wzo&cob;=516246&Page11914;=4 The ECB will announce in time when banknotes from the first series lose legal tender status.
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