The European Central Bank prepares new banknotes to replace the current ones, which have been in circulation for almost 20 years. This has been confirmed by the body itself in a official statement posted on their website.
In the words of the President of the ECB, Christine Lagarde, is “time to update the appearance of our banknotes so that Europeans of all ages and backgrounds can identify with themAt the same time he also stated that these banknotes “have come to stay” due to their demand, and are also considered as an “intangible symbol” of the European Union, even in times of crisis.
Citizen participation in the process
As the ECB explains in the statement, the process consists of several phases. First, discussion groups will be created. These groups have as their main function collect the opinions of all citizens of the European Union on possible designs.
Once the opinions of citizens have been collected, an advisory group made up of 27 experts (one for each country that is part of the EU) selected by the ECB itself based on the opinions provided by national banks, will be in charge of presenting to the Council Government of the ECB a list of all topics.
According to the list offered by the ECB Nuria Oliver, who is the Director and co-founder of the ELLIS Alicante Foundation and the Chief Data Scientist in the DataPop Alliance company, will be the Spanish representative who will be part of the advisory group.
The Governing Council has the last word
Once this procedure is done, according to the ECB, the opinion of the public is requested again, although unlike the first step, it will be on the selected topics, to later call a design competition for the new banknotes. On this last case, the Governing Council will have the last word on the design chosen in the final process.
With respect to current designs, images of different monuments or historical personalities predominate, along with other common elements in all types of banknote, such as the word “EURO”, its symbol (€) or the flag of the European Union. There are seven banknotes that are in circulation, banknotes of five euros, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 and 500 euros, next to the coins one cent, two cents, five cents, ten cents, 20 and 50 cents, and those of 1 and 2 euros.
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