January 1 – Euro Day

nPostednon January 1, 2014

Ta-dah!

nAnnew kind of money—one that straddles national borders, bringingnEuropean countries even closer together—was introduced to the worldnon this date in 1999 and also in 2002.

nOnnJanuary 1, 1999, the euro was introduced to the world financialnmarket as accounting currency. (There was no paper money or coins atnthat point.)
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nOn January 1, 2002, the paper and coin versions of theneuro were introduced.

Nonlonger would travelers have to trade in a few marks for a fewnthousand lire. No longer would they puzzle over a pocketful ofncentimes, pesetas, and drachmas. The euro makes traveling and tradingnwithin the eurozone much, much easier!

n(Ofncourse, one of the last times I went to Europe, I traveled fromnBelgium, which uses the euro, to Britain, which doesn’t—which hasnheld onto its own currency, called pounds—and then on to Ireland,nwhich again uses the euro. So things can still be somewhatncomplicated!)

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nTheneuro is the official currency of 17 nations and is used by another 5nnations. With 22 euro-using countries, there are around 334 millionnEuropeans using the euro on a daily basis. The amount of banknotesn(paper money) and coins in circulation amount to around 943 billionneuros. That is more, even, that the amount of U.S. dollars inncirculation.

All U.S. banknotes used to be green,
but now we are finally getting some
colorful variation.

n(Thatnmay seem like a dumb thing to say, that there are more euro notes andncoins in use than there are U.S. dollars. I mean, 22 countries havento use more money than one country, right? But the U.S. dollar is thenlargest reserve currency in the world and is the most traded currencynin the world. It’s just that a lot of that trade is numbers goingnback and forth, into and out of accounts, on the computer—notnpieces of paper or disks of metal! Plus, quite a few nations, such asnPanama, Ecuador, and Zimbabwe, use U.S. dollars as either theirnofficial currency or as their de facto currency.) n

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nFactsnabout the euro:

nEachn euro is equal to 100 cents.

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nRightn now (1/1/2014) the euro is worth $1.38 U.S.

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nFrancen was the first country to produce euro coins, perhaps because Francen is one of the largest users of cash rather than credit/debit cardsn and other digital transactions. (In 2000, four out of fiven transactions in France were still made with cash! Here in Southernn California, cash is not so usual. Kids paying less than $2 for an hamburger often use a card rather than cash.)

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nBeforen adopting the euro in 2000, Greece had used its coin, the silvern drachma, for about 2,600 years!

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nEachn kind of banknote uses a different color:

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n5n euro note – gray

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n10n euro note – red

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n20n euro note – blue

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n50n euro note – orange

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n100n euro note – green

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n200n euro note – yellow

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n500n euro note – purple

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nIfn you are wondering what color 1 euro notes are – the answer is thatn there is no such thing. Instead, 1 euro is a coin.

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nThen colorful euro bank notes are the same all over Europe, but the euron coins produced in each country are different. (Don’t worry! A euron coin produced in Ireland can be used—and is worth just as much—inn Spain.) With each nation creating its own coins and 8 different coinn denominations per country, there are more than 120 different coinsn for people to collect!

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n Checknout this websitento see the 1 euro coins of various nations. You can use the home pagenof the Euro Coins website to get to pages displaying all the 2 euroncoins, 50 cent coins, all the way down to 1 cent coins. n

nAlsonon this date: