Euro banknotes are the banknotes of the euro, the currency of the eurozone (see European Union). They have been in circulation since 2002 and are issued by the European Central Bank (ECB), each bearing the signature of the President of the European Central Bank. 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 printed in various member states.

Denominations

The banknotes show the signature of the president of the ECB, currently Jean-Claude Trichet

There are seven different denominations, each having a distinctive colour and size. The design for each of them has a common theme of European architecture in various artistic periods. The front (or recto) of the note features windows or gateways while the back (or verso) has bridges. Care has been taken so that the architectural examples do not represent any actual existing monument, so as not to induce jealousy and controversy in the choice of which monument should be depicted.^[1]

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 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.

Specification

The paper used for euro banknotes is 100% pure cotton fibre, which improves their durability as well as imparting a distinctive feel.^[2]

2002 Series

Image		Value	Dimensions, millimetres	Main Colour		Design		Printer code position
Obverse	Reverse					Architecture	Century
		€5	120 × 62		Grey	Classical	< 5th	left image edge
		€10	127 × 67		Red	Romanesque	11-12th	8 o'clock star
		€20	133 × 72		Blue	Gothic	13-14th	9 o'clock star
		€50	140 × 77		Orange	Renaissance	15-16th	right image edge
		€100	147 × 82		Green	Baroque & Rococo	17-18th	right of 9 o'clock star
		€200	153 × 82		Yellow-brown	Art Nouveau	19-20th	above 7 o'clock star
		€500	160 × 82		Purple	Modern 20th century	20-21st	9 o'clock star
These images are to scale at 0.7 pixels per millimetre, a Wikipedia standard for world banknotes. For table standards, see the banknote specification table.

The following member overseas territories are shown: the Azores, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Madeira, Martinique, Réunion, 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.^[3]

Special features for people with impaired sight

The design of euro banknotes include several characteristics suggested in co-operation with organisations representing blind people. These characteristics aid both people who are visually impaired (people who can see the banknotes, but cannot necessarily read the printing on them) and those who are entirely blind.

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.^{citation needed}

Security features

The ECB has described some of the more rudimentary security features of the euro note, allowing the general public to authenticate their currency at a glance. However, in the interest of security, the exhaustive list of these features is a closely-guarded secret.

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:

Holograms

€5 holographic band

The €5, €10 and €20 notes carry a holographic band to the right of the front side. This band is imprinted with the note's denomination; e.g., "€5 €5 €5...." in the case of the €5 note.

In the case of the €50 notes and higher, the band is replaced with a holographic decal.

Variable colour ink

Appears on the lower right corner of back side of the €50 and higher. When observed from different angles, the colour varies between purple and green.

Checksum

Each note has a unique serial number. The serial number contains a check digit (last digit) between 1 and 9, that fulfills the following criterion: if the initial letter is replaced by its position in the alphabet (that is L is 12, M is 13,..., Z is 26), the remainder from division of the resulting number by 9 is 8. The remainder from division by 9 can easily be found by repeatedly adding up parts of the number.

For example: Z10708476264 gives 2610708476264. The remainder from division by 9 can be found by: 26 + 1 + 0 + 7 + 0 + 8 + 4 + 7 + 6 + 2 + 6 + 4 = 71 , 7 + 1 = 8

By replacing the initial letter by a different system, you will get different required remainders. For instance, when replacing the letter by its ASCII value, the remainder will be 0, meaning, the resulting number will be divisible by 9 (see Divisibility rule; in this case, the repeated addition will result in 9).

Another example: Z10708476264: the ASCII code for Z is 90, so the resulting number is 9010708476264. The addition of all digits gives 54; 5+4 = 9 - so the number is divisible by 9, or 9010708476264 modulo 9 is 0.

EURion constellation

Euro banknotes contain a pattern known as the EURion constellation which can be used to detect their identity as banknotes to prevent copying. Some older photocopiers are programmed to reject images containing this pattern.

Watermarks

Standard watermark

Each denomination is printed on uniquely-watermarked paper. This may be observed by holding the note up to the light.

Digital watermark

Like the EURion constellation, a Digimarc digital watermark is embedded in the banknotes' designs. Recent versions of image editors, such as Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro refuse to process banknotes.^[4]

Infra-red and ultra-violet watermarks

When seen in the near infrared, the banknotes will show darker areas in different zones depending on the denomination. Ultraviolet light will make the EURion constellation show in sharper contrast, and also some fluorescent threads stand out.

Printing registration

The note value in the upper-left corner is printed incompletely, as is the denomination in the upper-right corner of the back. When held up to the light, this denomination is visible in its entirety. Genuine notes will exhibit perfect alignment (or "registration") between the front and back. If the note has been printed incorrectly, i.e. by a counterfeiter, these numbers may appear poorly aligned.

Raised printing

Some areas of the notes have a different Texture from others. the "BCE ECB EZB" characters are raised to the touch.

Bar code

When held up to the light, metallic bars can be seen to the right of the watermark. The number and width of these bars indicates the value of the note. When scanned, these bars are converted to Manchester code.

(looked at from the reverse, a dark bar is 1, a bright bar 0)

Security thread

A black magnetic thread in the middle of the note is seen only against a light source. It shows the denomination of the note, along with the word "euro".

Magnetic ink

Some areas feature magnetic ink. The rightmost church window on the €20 note is magnetic, as well as the large zero above it.

Micro-print

The texture lines to the bottom, e.g. those aligned with the ΕΥΡΩ mark on the €10 note, are actually made of the word "EURO" in very small print.

Matted surface

The euro sign and the denomination are printed on a vertical band which is only visible when lighted at an angle of 45°. This only exists for banknotes €5, €10, and €20.

Counterfeiting

Graph of counterfeits seized by ECB

There has been a rapid growth in the counterfeiting of euro banknotes and coins since the launch of the currency in 2002.

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 worth a total of around €1.8 million from two laboratories and estimated that 145,000 notes had already entered 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.^[5]

Serial number

Unlike euro coins, euro notes do not have a national side indicating which country issued them (which is not necessarily where they were printed). This information is instead encoded within the first character of each note's serial number.

The first character of the serial number is a letter which uniquely identifies the country that issues the note. The remaining 13 characters are numbers which, when added up and the digits of the resulting sum then added together again until a single digit remains, 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, F and G prefixes are reserved for states 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:

⁽¹⁾ checksum of the 11 digits without the letter

• The positions of Denmark and Greece have been swapped in the list of letters starting the serial numbers, presumably because Y (upsilon) is a letter of the Greek alphabet, while W is not.
• Ireland's first official language is Irish; however, in the above chart it is clear the order was based on the English Ireland rather than the Irish which is Éire. Irish is an official EU language as of 1 January 2007. It is uncertain if this will affect the placement of its code in euro banknotes printed after that time.
• In the case of Finland, which has two official languages that are also official EU languages (Finnish and Swedish), the order was based on the Finnish Suomi instead of the Swedish Finland, presumably because Finnish is the majority language in the country.
• Belgium has three official languages, all of which are official EU languages. Luxembourg also has three official languages, with two being official EU languages. However, in these cases, the countries' positions in the list would be the same no matter which language was used.

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^[6].

Cyprus and Malta will not print euro notes for the time being, and will use previously issued banknotes from other eurozone member states. However, country codes have been reserved for both countries, as appears on the ECB Euro banknote FAQ site [1].

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) and "F" was assigned to Malta.

Also, as the number of members of the EU grows steadily larger, it seems likely that when the next series is issued (2010 expected) that the prefixes will change to 2-character prefixes as at that stage, there should be 27 members (but only 26 letters in the Latin alphabet, or fewer if letters that could be confused with numbers are excluded).

It has also 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).

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.

However, 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 bill from Portugal, €100 and €500 bills from Ireland and €200 and €500 bills 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." ^[7]

Printing works

On each of the 7 denominations of the banknote, there is a small six-character printing code which uniquely identifies the printing information of each banknote.

These printing codes have an initial letter, followed by 3 digits, followed by a single letter, and ending in a digit, for example, "G013B6."

The initial digit identifies the printing facility, as described below. "G" for example would be Enschede & Sons, a printer in the Netherlands. The 3 digits identify sequential printing places. "013," for example, would be the 13th printing plate created by the printer. The fifth character, a letter and sixth character, a number, represent the row and column, respectively, of the particular banknote on the particular plate. So "B" would be the second row and "6" would indicate the sixth column.^[8]

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 6 columns), the sheets for €10 banknotes have 54 banknotes (9 rows, 6 columns), and for €20 banknotes have 45 banknotes (9 rows, 5 columns) ^[9]

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 producing 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.^[10]

• The A, C and S codes have been reserved for printers currently not printing euro banknotes.
• Where a printer is listed as producing bankotes for a particular country, this may apply to a single denomination, or as many as all seven denominations. Some NCBs source different denominations from different printers (Greece sourcing from 5 different printers), and some source even a single denomination from multiple printers (the Netherlands has sourced the 5 Euro note from 3 different printers). NCBs that issue banknotes are free to source from any authorized printers, and do so in varying quantities. As of June 2008, there are a total of 133 known printer/signature/country/denomination combinations of Euro banknotes; with more combinations surely to follow, much to the delight of banknote collectors.

Design changes

Banknotes have to bear the ECB president's signature. New notes printed after November 2003 show Jean Claude Trichet's signature, replacing that of the first president, Wim Duisenberg.

Current issues do not reflect the expansion of the EU to 27 member states (Cyprus and Malta are not depicted on current notes). Since the ECB plans to redesign the notes every seven or eight years after each issue, a second series of banknotes is already in preparation. New production and anti-counterfeiting techniques will be employed on the new notes, but the design will be of the same theme and colours as the current series; bridges and arches. They would still be recognisable as a new series however.^[11]

Three more abbreviations of the European Central Bank name will have to be included on the banknotes: the Cyrillic (ЕЦБ), Hungarian (EKB) and Polish (EBC).

Only the Cyrillic rendering of the name "euro" (евро) 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 2011. The ECB will announce in time when banknotes from the first series lose legal tender status.^[12]

€1 and €2 notes

Italy, Greece and Austria have asked several times to introduce lower denominations of euro notes.^[13] The ECB has stated that "printing a €1 note is more expensive (and less durable) than minting a €1 coin". On 18 November 2004 the ECB decided definitively that there was insufficient demand across the Eurozone for very low denomination banknotes. On 25 October 2005, however, more than half of the MEPs supported a motion calling on the European Commission and the European Central Bank to recognise the definite need for the introduction of €1 and €2 banknotes.^[14] However it must be noted that the European Central Bank is not directly answerable to the Parliament or the Commission, and will therefore possibly ignore the motion. It is also possible the ECB may recognise the need, but take no action to fulfil this need.

Design

Owing to the ubiquity of countless historic bridges, arches, and gateways throughout the continent, all the structures represented on the banknotes are entirely fictional syntheses of the relevant architectural styles, merely designed to evoke the landmarks within the EU^[15], representing various European ages and styles.^[16] For example, the €5 banknote has a generic rendition of a the Classical Period, the €10 of Romanesque, the €20 of Gothic, the €50 of the Renaissance, the €100 of Baroque and Rococo, €200 of Art Nouveau and the €500 of Modern style. However, in a survey conducted by the Dutch NCB (De Nederlandsche Bank), only 2% of the population was able to identify the theme of the €5, and 1% correctly identified the €50 theme. Also, while the designs are supposed to be devoid of any identifiable characteristics, the initial designs by Robert Kalina were of actual bridges, including the Rialto bridge in Venice and the Pont de Neuilly in Paris, and were subsequently rendered more generic; the final designs still bear very close similarities to their specific prototypes; thus they are not truly generic^[17].

See also

European Union portal

Numismatics portal

• Currency bill tracking
• EuroBillTracker

References

External links

• Security features on euro banknotes
• RFID technology on euro banknotes
• Information on signatures, printer plate numbers and more
• Euro banknote design exhibition — entries for the 1996 banknote design competition (24MB PDF)
• "The euro banknotes that never were! (L’euro : les maquettes refusées! )" 44 euro banknote designs of the 1996 competition
• Defective 10 Euros banknote

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