Forget that blank gate on the five-euro bill. Because the euro banknotes are getting a different look. The new designs for the paper money, which remains popular despite all debit card payments, should be ready by 2024, the European Central Bank has announced. The ECB President Christine Lagarde implicitly admitted that the notes are now not up to par the press statement.
She said: „After 20 years it is time to change our banknotes […] more appealing to Europeans of all ages and backgrounds.” An advisory committee will be set up including: Alice Temlow, professor by special appointment at the UvA and lecturer at the KABK in The Hague. The public can participate in the decision-making process about possible themes for the banknotes. Then follows a design competition. The bank ultimately decides.
The picture on all of our paper money is sensitive. Nationalistic and nostalgic sentiments lurk. Hence the meaningless architecture on the primeval euros, nobody could care less about that.
„Those euro notes […] with a kind of operetta set-pillars on them, which can fall over at any moment: that’s money that I spend immediately. In this way they want to stimulate the economy”, said artist Jan Wolkers when the euro was introduced in 2001. He thought the 50 guilder note with the sunflower and the tenner with the stickleback was much nicer. Maybe that’s where the key is? European animals, threatened or not, on the new euro notes? Very green, right away. A sparrow for a tenner, a wolf for 50 euros. “That’s a wolf and two sparrows.” Although cat and dog, Europes most popular pets, might be more appropriate.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of December 9, 2021
#sparrow #tenner