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.
Nobody wrote it here so far. I’ll do this time.
Marie Skłodowska-Curie
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:
- €5: Greek opera singer Maria Callas
- €10: German composer Ludwig van Beethoven
- €20: Polish-French scientist Marie Curie
- €50: Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes
- €100: Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci
- €200: Austrian peace activist Bertha von Suttner
So what about representation for the other countries?
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.
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.
As a dual Polish-Spanish citizen
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 would be better, if they opt for something everyone knows.
Perhaps, some of the EU buildings ? Like the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), the European Central Bank (ECB) , the Strasbourg building seat of the European Parliament, etc…
Also, since they are leaning towards landscapes, it can be the ones we identify the most like the Mediterranean Sea and with the word peace translated into some of the EU languages on the other side of the banknote.
I know my proposals are not creative, but damn… there are options definitely.
EU buildings is a bad idea IMO, it reinforces this bad idea that “the EU is these people in Brussels”.
Still sad the Yuri euro did not make the cut
I found articles with essentially the same content from May and June of this year.
Wow that is old news. I know it was on the ECB website since august at least!
