I find the bridges to be rather brilliant, as they're distinctly European without being placeable (until Spijkenisse got feeling[1]).
The least historical governmental buildings in Europe seems like an awful choice by contrast: They're tied to a physical location in western Europe that most of us have little to no connection to. They're boring (which is not a criticism of the buildings, they're functional which is their purpose, but I'd rather not see them on coinage).
For a similar reason, the portraits are also just... fine. Greek, German, Polish-French, Spaniard, Italian, and Austrian. It's much more diverse than the buildings, but the Balkans, Nordics (including Latvia and Estonia), Benelux, and other smaller states remain unrepresented. Of course, changing anyone out would leave another unrepresented (though the obverse and reverse could both be used in harmony, why does the reverse have to be nondescript?).
If we're going for people, one thing I really like about the Swedish bills is that the person on the lowest denomination is specifically chosen to have an icon for children: Currently Astrid Lindgren and previously Selma Lagerlöf made the 20 krona bill distinctly "for the children". The choice of Bertha von Suttner for the highest denomination is one that I agree with -- and also aligned with the Swedish bank notes where the equivalent is held by Dag Hammarskjöld. Both ECB and Riksbanken chose a person best known for their pursuit of peace and unity of humankind.
Still, the beauty of the bridges is that they're European, not French or German.
All that aside, I'd hope for F or J stylistically. There's too much vectorization happening on most of the others. It feels like the others won't stand the test of time. G and C already feels ten years out of date imo.
As I mentioned elsewhere, it's kinda strange they didn't learn the lesson from Euro coins and did multiple versions of each banknote to cover and represent every member state with at least one person.
Faces on Euro banknotes are a terrible idea. Even internationally well-known personalities are associated with certain countries, and you do not put things that represent specific countries on banknotes used in different countries.
The EU isn't a federation, and having a single currency doesn't make the eurozone any more so.
The buildings aren't as bad, being european insitution headquarters. However, as they aren't necessarily widely recognizable, they come out a bit self serving.
Is it too much to ask to consider that the people on the banknotes are/will be depicted because they are European, and not because they come from any member State in particular?
It's not a matter of protesting (nor is it a matter of nationalism).
It's a matter of bureocrats remembering that there are more countries in the eurozone than banknotes, and even if that wasn't the case, their denominations can be read as hierarchy.
It is this kind of myopic pettiness that prevents the EU from ever really ascending to a united and powerful bloc. It's why USA and China view them as just very easy targets to squeeze.
I read an interesting fact recently that the poorest USA state, Mississippi, has a larger economy and GDP than 1/3 of all EU members.
It is shocking that this union can function at all with how top heavy it is.
I sort of disagree, the faces SHOULD foster a unified identification as European. And at least on paper they do kind of nicely, imho. No one can argue with Da Vinci. Curie is Polish-French. Callas is internationally beloved and Greek. Beethoven is potentially the second-best known world-wide behind Da Vinci, and can be claimed by the whole German-speaking area, at least Germany and Austria. Cervantes is perhaps more obscure as a face, but well-deserved and everyone knows “quixotic”. Von Suttner is the most obscure and probably overrepresents the German-speaking countries, but it’s Europe, so the pacifist angle is hard to argue against.
Everyone can think of similarly deserving people. They should do it like the coins and just have an abundance of motifs from every country. Since they’re too scared to put english text on them, put a QR code link to some short text in every language. I cringe at the idea of QR codes in general, but what are you going to do.
The buildings are all the same steel and glass bullshit and represent nothing if not the widely despised bureaucratic aspects of the EU. The birds at least look nice, but they’re boring and hyper-harmless.
I'm europeist (but no longer a federationist after the cooperation debacle that was the eurocrisis) and I have no issue with the choice of personalities.
I do have an issue with anything that might be interpreted as the proposals of some countries having had more weight that others.
There's a reason why the current Euro banknotes represent bridges that do not exist in the real world.
> Beethoven is potentially the second-best known world-wide behind Da Vinci
You mean Europeans? Because I highly doubt more ppl know about them than about Jesus. And I'd claim the most well known European is probably Hitler, through infamy.
Your issue is that people in Spain look at their note and think “da Vinci isn’t us, he’s them”.
Their idea is that they want people all over the EU to think of da Vinci as “us”. Over time, it’ll become more normal to consider luminaries from other European countries as part of the shared heritage.
That said there will be countries that may ask why their guy can’t make it to the note. Why not Herge, the Belgians might ask? The question is left as an exercise to the reader.
Your last question is something to consider in the current context of rising nationalism, which is all about the perception of being left out (even in the larger countries, where that perception is about each other).
I feel like the design guidelines were fundamentally flawed, and as a logical result none of the design proposals are better than what we already have.
The whole "some person's face" thing doesn't work because most people won't be familiar with them. Heck, you'd be lucky if the average person is familiar with their names! The birds & buildings suffer from the same issue: never seen them, can't identify them, don't care about them. And because it references real-world things there's a very genuine risk of people being upset over being underrepresented, or the person or institution being depicted getting disgraced.
What's left is the "vague depictions of people doing random things" theming, but that's neither European nor meaningful nor distinctive. You forget about it the second you stop looking at it.
The previous two series - depicting bridge types and building styles - neatly bypassed this by being something everyone could relate to, while at the same time not referencing anything specific-enough that anyone could be upset about it. Especially the first series nailed this down perfectly.
Given the mediocre design proposals we're now left with, I think Design J is the obvious best choice. It is not actively ugly, and the various bills are at least distinct enough that they are easy to tell apart. Design H isn't too bad, but the building side is just "generic glass blob in a distance" rather than anything one would remember and recognize.
> The whole "some person's face" thing doesn't work because most people won't be familiar with them.
There’s millennia of history of having coins and paper money faces that most people will not be familiar with.
> The previous two series - depicting bridge types and building styles - neatly bypassed this by being something everyone could relate to,
I don’t see much difference there. Just as many people can’t see more than “man with beard” or “bird with long legs”, I bet many people can’t seen more than “old bridge” or “modern bridge” for the current designs (what fraction of the population can discriminate the €5 ‘classical’ from the €10 ‘romanesque’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_banknotes)?)
>there's a very genuine risk of people being upset over being underrepresented
Explain yourself. Who the hell could feel upset upon seeing Marie Curie, Beethoven, da Vinci or Maria Callas? They are all very recognizable, well known European figures with astounding achievements and highly respected by any true European worth its name.
Are you suggesting we should erase them because of someone's feeling?
I really dislike the back of the notes on pretty much all of them. Generic crowds of people with ugly backdrops, just feels very uninspired especially when some of the front designs are so bold
The people choosing these banknotes put their office buildings on the money. They also seemed to have a gender quota, and have put on the 200 euro someone who is unknown to most Europeans (Marie Curie and Maria Callas were popular on the other hand).
Honestly, I enjoy plenty of benefits from the EU, but this non-representative style of decision-making makes me understand the EU-haters.
So many of these have some building as the backdrop, but all the buildings are modernist skyscrapers and uninspired office buildings
Europe doesn't have a dearth of stunning architecture. Have they all been discarded in favor of ugly straightline modernist sloptitecture because they might be construed as offensive for some reason?
This sounds very self-centered. Many people already see the EU bureaucrats as something alien, let's not give them another reason to think they're selfish.
I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic; they are as extremely alien, as they are deeply “selfish”, as you put it so generously.
I know many people will see and think of the EU as a positive thing, just like how the colonists of the past rationalized their selfish harm and destruction through things like claiming to bring civilization to the savages; but under all the fluff, all the slick marketing and propaganda lies and manipulation, the indigenous European cultures and people are being destroyed right before our very eyes. Many people cheer it on while decrying how those horrible people of the past could have done the very same thing they support through the EU, only towards their very own people.
Considering the alien and hostile nature of the EU towards actual Europeans and European culture, it does seem most appropriate to have the alien, dystopian, monolithic, uninspired, cold buildings on the currency looking like alien spaceships, as a true representation of what the EU is; an alien bait and switch occupation that is devastating the indigenous people and cultures of Europe just like the ruling class did all over the rest of the planet in previous centuries.
Now the European peoples are getting the racist, narcissistic, supremacist colonization experience…even if in a kind of inverse form…that will and is destroying and devastating the indigenous people and cultures.
What’s amazing is how people cannot see that they are part of the very kind of thing they often decry others having done elsewhere in the past; indigenous European languages and dialects are dying out because they’re being killed off by EU policies by the dozens, cultural practices that are centuries and millennia old are being killed and dying out with them. Europeans don’t even see the thing that is obvious to a self-aware transatlantic person; Europe is being turned into an America. Look at America what it is now … that’s your future, kid. Do you really want to do that, be a devastated, hollow husk of what you once were, what you could have been???
Just look around you; Europe is gearing up to be a war machine, the civilian industrial base is being destroyed, the economies are being financialized, deficits are spreading, unique cultures are being destroyed and turned into corporate Disney versions of themselves! Sounds familiar!
Perhaps making the notes as ugly and boring as possible will push folks off physical money onto trackable digital money that is just as soulless as the buildings on the notes.
Are you against the idea of European cooperation in general? Or against the implementation?
If there is to be European cooperation that goes beyond heads of states talking to each other, you're going to need some kind of space where they can do that. Using that building as a symbol seems like an obvious choice albeit not a very creative one. Really struggle to see how that choice can be "extremely insulting".
The average European does not view those buildings as symbols of European cooperation. They are just another generic office building some nameless and faceless bureaucrats work in. They lack the symbolism and recognizability of some US buildings like the White House, the Capitol, or the Pentagon - which are all inherently linked to the institutions they host.
A movie showing an external shot of the White House establishes that we're going to be looking at the US President next. A movie showing an external shot of the European Parliament establishes... office drones working in the Business Factory?
There just shouldn’t be any buildings on those notes. Any good choices are too country specific.
All of them are out imo only D & F I find actually inspired and good the rest of these designs should go straight into the bin.
Stop birds, people, buildings then see what they can come up with. Gotta be better.
These are EU government buildings; unlike the bridges in the current notes, they’re real structures, not an archetype. The EU likes a giant office block, generally.
Europe is a continent with countries that have literally centuries of enimity and nationalism between them.
You cannot put a French building on a banknote.
Bland and inoffensive is what keeps the Union together. Its why Strasbourg exists. Its why there are Dutch translators despite the fact every Dutch member of parliament speeches in English.
I'm in the EU and you absolutely can put a French building on a banknote. I'd much rather look at the Eiffel tower or the Tower of Pisa or Neuschwanstein castle than the European Court of Auditors.
Or if you like to have something modern, Paimio Sanatorium or Turning Torso.
But that defeats the purpose of having a boring glass building, or birds or modern bridges. The underpinning ideology is that europe should have no history, no culture and no identity, because suggesting anything else 1) will offend the hyper sensitivity of modern left ideologues who think that the said culture, history and identity is terrible and should only be condemned, apologised for, and buried, and 2) would be unwelcoming to immigrants as it would suggest somehow that there is a society they should adapt to rather than the other way round.
I remember a major French pro-european politician (Modem party) attempting to define Europe (in the context of integrating Turkey), as "the friends of democracy". When you can't (or rather refuse to) define your identity, the only thing left to represent it is birds, office buildings and bridges. Notre Damme de Paris or the Pantheon in Rome are just old embarrassing historical artefacts of an evil civilisation.
The underpinning ideology is that Europe (meaning the EU) should have no history, no culture and no identity because they are monopoly of the member States/nations. And, as always, if you put a monument or person from some country in the banknotes, the other states will complain
I get that we wouldn't want to single out specific nations over others on the designs.
But I kinda wish we would national designs like we do for the coins, one side's standardized and the other gets a custom design depending on the nation. I think we'd get a lot very neat variety, but I understand that it makes things a lot more complicated and expensive.
I don't know that it's about "Bland and inoffensive" so much as about recognition that differences are fine. Two football teams don't agree about which team is best - but they do agree the rules of football. Without that there is no game.
Having multiple languages is more of that "differences are fine". The use of Directives rather than Regulations for many purposes allows a country's government to incorporate local differences in how we do things. A Regulation applies everywhere, but the Directive just tells your government to make local law to meet some goal. What we want to achieve is the same in Paris and San Gimignano but how we do it will vary by local culture.
I mean, half of these proposals put specific people from specific countries on banknotes. So it's hard to argue that it would be impossible to do the same with buildings.
For me, across all of them only two felt actually decent for a bank note (B & E, I is okay, just not used to bank notes in that orientation, same for J, but that one should be more monochrome). Either they were too vibrant or the design was too busy/had unnecesary elements.
I also feel like the notes that had buildings (like we have now) are just.. better. The initial run of 2002-2013 remains the best aesthetically, imo.
I prefer the Birds & Rivers theme because nobody is expecting a specific bird to meet some arbitrary ideal whereas if you put identifiable humans on a banknote people start to mistake their inevitable flaws for a desirable property. I feel this more strongly for statues, but it seems desirable for the Euro or any potential international currency too.
I don't think anyone will want to become cranky and deaf because Beethoven is on a bank note, but putting people on them is rather arbitrary. The set looks too much like a compromise for political safety.
> nobody is expecting a specific bird to meet some arbitrary ideal
People will still find ways to get upset about none or too few of the birds being present in their country, or "their bird" being depicted on the "cheap" notes.
There are very few birds which are commonly seen throughout all of the EU, from cold and wet Finland to hot and dry Spain. Virtually all birds have a limited geographical living area, which means you are automatically unintentionally playing favorites with countries.
I'm partial for statues, and birds and rivers is a good theme. I feel like if they sticked to the semi-monochrome of the previous notes I'd be more favorable to them aswell. Monochrome might be the wrong word, ESL.
Monochrome means "single colour". Typically shades of that colour are included, so if something was dark purple lines on a light purple background we might say that's monochrome. In some cases it's taken to mean that there's just black/ grey/ white, but here it makes sense to say that e.g. one note is green, another blue, but no individuals notes are a mix of green and blue, they're monochrome.
Since you mentioned English isn't your first language, this use of the "to stick" verb where it's about adhering to something (metaphorically in your case) has a different past participle, "stuck". You wrote "sticked" which makes sense but isn't used for this meaning today. Nobody will misunderstand but it will sound wrong to them, we'd say e.g. "Perhaps if we'd stuck with Zig the game would be finished by now" or "Somebody stuck their chewing gum to the table".
Most of these new designs are monochrome excepting that the European flag is itself blue because that's what colour the flag is. A few of them are more colourful, and I see what you mean about that adding to clutter. For their purpose they're successful because the big reason to use colour is that people with very poor sight (some of whom are legally blind but do retain some ability to determine colour) can tell a red note from a blue one, the small accents in a different colour won't affect that. If your sight is good enough to figure out it's a European flag, you don't need this cue, you can read the large numerals saying "100" nearby to determine it's a €100 note.
My favourite by far is Proposal F - Jan Robert Dünnweller. A sort of retro-modern design with a more restricted use of colour, like you suggest. This one really pops and is quite unique.
The others, for the most part, aren't necessarily bad, but they are a bit boring and derivative.
> if you put identifiable humans on a banknote people start to mistake their inevitable flaws for a desirable property
Does the same logic extend all elevated positions? A person in a national portrait gallery, a person with a statue, a person with an olympic medal or a nobel prize, a person with a fancy title like president or queen?
Or is there something specific about bank notes that makes them more problematic?
They are Euro bank notes. They are supposed to represent all of the EU. If there's even the possibility of someone getting upset over a specific portrayal you have failed at your one task.
I can't exactly get upset over "the concept of Renaissance architecture". I can get upset over, say, Beethoven fighting his sister-in-law to get the custody of her son.
You may have noticed that all the people on these banknotes are, much like on US banknotes, dead. So that insulates them from a lot of things which happen to living people if we reconsider them.
We can and do take away honours from living people, you might remember that Paula Vennells had an OBE, but that was removed because while she hasn't and likely won't ever be actually prosecuted for it, it's obviously her fault that so many UK subpostmasters were convicted of crimes they didn't commit and in some cases even committed suicide.
Likewise the present King of England's brother would in the ordinary course of things be a pretty important guy with the title Prince and so on. But he's not, he's just Andrew because even though again he's unlikely to face prosecution it does seem like he fucked an underage girl trafficked by Epstein so the King took away his titles.
But for example Oscar Pistorius has several medals for running - not just in paralympic events but straight up against people with both legs and no running blades. The medals weren't retracted when he murdered somebody or even when he was sent to prison for the murders. Oscar still ran really fast and the medals stand. But hopefully we are clear that "Was very fast" and "Is a terrible person" are compatible ideas.
> same for J, but that one should be more monochrome
The color is actually the main reason I dislike that design the least!
All the monochrome blobs do have a more traditional bank note feeling, but the complete lack of contrast makes them unmemorable and hard to identify. You can't trivially tell them apart at a quick glance, you have to either actively read the number or identify it by color. But the numbers aren't big enough for reading, and there are a lot of colorblind people.
Try opening them up in a photo editing tool. Blur them and desaturate them a bunch. Can you still tell them apart?
I like the ones you find boring (but not the corporate Memphis ones) - money is a serious matter, so it's IMO supposed to look serious and a little boring.
I feel like banknotes is one of the few common-places that EU could convey some sort of "shared vision/purpose" that is largely missing in general. From this perspective "boring" as in buildings etc are not very good options as they do not convey anything positive, and make it look further "cold and distant" from people. While options like F show a vision which europe could aim towards.
Of course then, on the other hand, the boring options are in this sense the most honest ones.
While I don't really particularly like any of the designs, the F option is absolutely wild and I feel it would really make the Euro notes standout in the world. I don't know that it would make for a good bank note design, but it is visibly distinct.
The birds on J is incredibly beautiful, but that's somewhat offset by the building on the reverse.
I found it hard to vote just by saying "I like this design" for each one individually. Since we have a set of limited option, I'd rather compare and pick the ones I prefer in comparison of the others.
I helped Claude build a simple web app (static, local, oss) to make you choose among pairs, to progressively determine your personal preference.
It outputs your top 3, you can share the summary like this:
Recto Verso Euro
My top euro banknote designs:
Design H
Design D
Design B
→ https://pil0u.github.io/recto-verso-euro/#r=HDBJIGECFA&c=68
It's very WIP, but I found this approach useful to fill the survey, so why not share
I scanned through it and settled on Design H as well, birds and buildings. One thing I started to notice while looking over the design that I had a strong preference for the number to be in the corners. The last two one are "portrait" which feels weird to me but might be more appealing to a younger generation.
In Canada, we have ONE bill with a vertical orientation. [0] The other notes (5$, 20$, 50$, 100$), though designed a bit earlier than then vertical 10$ note but definitely in the same style, are horizontal. There is also a discontinued, but still circulating, horizontal 10$ bill.
I have zero reason to complain honestly. It's never impacted me negatively at all... but aestetically it feels weird when mixed together with other bills.
If you're sorting money, you'll already know which ones are 10$ because they're that colour of purple... but the number won't be facing the right way. If you're making an ATM UI that lets people pick what mix of bills to withdrawl, RBC chose to show pictures of the bills for some reason, featuring the old horizontal 10$ bill (which it doesn't dispense) because clearly the actual 10$ bill wouldn't fit in the UI. [1] (I didn't expect this to be illustrated by a random youtube video, but it turns out the internet has everything.)
Is that a problem? No. Is it juuust weird enough that family from overseas visting me will mention how weird it is every single time they use an ATM? Yes.
If the euro switched to vertical all at once maybe that wouldn't be as weird, but the old horizontal bills are going to be circulating for a long time.
I can get behind some comments here that the buildings are representative of the institution of Europe, not the people. I love the birds, and probably naturally settled to the one where the buildings are less visible ^^
Hope it's the birds. I suppose there's no way to vote or anything with the current level of technological advancement, and the final design will be chosen by professional choosers that are handsomely paid for their hard work?
There's a survey link. Not sure it works as Cloudflare blocks me from accessing it. Oh the irony, having my opinion as EU citizen about an EU issue blocked by some silly US company.
The main benefit of Brexit is that the EU is now able to use English as a neutral universal language which is both commonly-known and doesn't favor any individual member state.
Clearly the best choice would've been to extend this and put British buildings or British historical people on the next generation of Euro notes. It would favor no EU country, so clearly it is the most neutral option. /s
I don't like to have silhouettes instead of people on the back, and that buildings related to the current institutions are featured on so many designs
These are a current necessities, but nothing to sanctuarize for the future.
The only thing that should remain stable in Europe are ideas, and the Swiss got it better on their notes
> These are a current necessities, but nothing to sanctuarize for the future.
Although the ECB does not today "withdraw" notes in the sense that they cease to be valid for most purposes, it does deliberately destroy old notes and issue new ones with different images to replace them, so the original series must be getting pretty rare by now - not rare enough to be worth serious collectors paying money for it, but your ten year old may never have seen an actual old Euro €500 note even though in principle those still are valid money in the Eurozone.
> deliberately destroy old notes and issue new ones with different images to replace them
Big part of the reason for this appears to be security. Many years ago a high-ranking official from Finnish central bank told in an interview that bank notes need to be redesigned approximately once per decade. Reason is that it takes about that long for the materials and printing technology to get commoditised enough for criminal enterprises to be able to start manufacturing "high-grade" forgeries at any real scale.
Every generation of bank notes employs a whole bunch of newly developed technologies and tricks that make the notes themselves distinctive, as well as incredibly difficult[ß] to forge.
ß: Some of it is down to tightly locked down and guarded speciality supply chains. Some is due to advances in microprinting and ilk. If you had unlimited resources, you could arrange to have the necessary equipment, supplies, staff and materials to print your own forged money. It'd just be slow, low-yield and very expensive.
Aren't they? Pictures are quite small, but B50 is clearly a stork. B100 looks like some kind of heron maybe, not sure. B10 is a kingfisher, I suppose. I don't know, they look real enough to me.
That's exactly why they are a better choice, like the imaginary bridges on current Euro banknotes.
The selection of people is also quite poor but that's because people are a poor choice: Most notable historical people are very linked to specific countries, often against other countries so picking neutral ones is hard. They also clearly decided to have an equal number of men and women, which makes it even harder. Obviously there aren't enough different banknotes to represent every country, either.
Faces are a terrible idea for a common currency shared by 21 countries.
You have to pick one writer, good that the English left for good so Shakespeare's out, but how do the French feel about Cervantes vs. Victor Hugo?
The Poles complaining that they didn't get enough recognition because Marie Curie's maiden name isn't given enough prominence should tell you all there is to know about this being a good idea.
> how do the French feel about Cervantes vs. Victor Hugo?
I don't think anybody would mind since there's already Marie Curie, which is an obvious choice because she's both Polish and French. I don't know how the Polish take it but the French have no particular feelings about her being Polish as well.
Maria Skłodowska-Curie was very helpful, at trying to solve #2 and #5 countries (by population) in one stroke. Good that the big 5 EU countries were simple enough to cover.
But why are a Greek-American, and an - unknown to the majority of Europeans - Austrian in there?
How many counties more populous than Austria are unrepresented? Do all EU countries count, or just EZ? (Poland is not EZ, is represented, still complained)
It's an impossible list. Europeans don't necessarily have shared heroes, and if they did, some of these wouldn't be top 6.
Heroes fought and died fighting countries that are in the EU today.
Obviously you can't have them on the banknotes.
As for the smaller countries- well let's face it do you think anyone in Europe gives a shit about Dutch or Estonian history and culture?
Its France and Germany all the way down I'm afraid. At least we still have the veto.
I try to pay everything in cash as much as I can, so it's nice to see the banknotes get some love from the ECB (even though the absence of €1 and €2 banknotes still hurts…).
I think it's a bit strange to feature people on these, plus it would be difficult to agree on who to feature between the 21 € states. The birds look cool! But it would have been nice to modernize the current architecture-based design rather than feature random EU office buildings.
The US style? I much prefer the Japanese style instead (where €5 would be a coin instead of a note). When our largest coin is too small to buy a drink at a vending machine we've got a problem. ATMs don't turn over €5 notes anyway, so their existence is painfully awkward.
Why, though? I'd much prefer not to carry any coins at all, ever since I gave up and stopped fighting the Big Brother (I applaud everyone who still does, but it just didn't seem like my struggle was productive). I mean, to think of it, coins never were very nice to use, I just wasn't bothered by it, because the volume of cash on me was quite significant anyway. Now it's not and I just don't carry any coins at all. Paper is so much nicer to handle. I still need to have some cash just in case, but I'd simply "forgive" any change below 1€ now. I don't feel rich enough to forgive everything below 5€ though.
Coins are far more durable and usually easier for machines to properly sense. If you're using vending machines to buy drinks it's nice just dropping a coin or two into a machine and getting a beverage. Notes can get worn and fail to read properly by machines taking bills in the field. When you need like 5 of the most widely circulated coins for a single drink it gets annoying though.
I miss seeing machines that would bend a 12oz can of soda for 25¢. Those were the days.
I sometimes go to coin-op car washes, it sucks having to punch a fist full of quarters into the machine for a quick wash.
Coins don't fold, though. Carrying a few bills around in a money clip is trivial, coins quickly devolve into carrying a giant pile of loose change with near-zero value.
The main reason I don't use more cash is that it is so inconvenient. I don't want any coins back as change, and always telling cashiers to keep the change when the smallest bill is €5 is just too much for me.
> coins quickly devolve into carrying a giant pile of loose change with near-zero value.
Which is why it'd be better if they weren't all nearly zero value in today's money. Coins of tiny value really suck, I agree. What am I going to do with nickels and dimes, really? So useless.
I also agree bills made from that plastic material seem to hold up better and scan better by machines than the "paper" used in USD, so that's less of a concern.
Bills are imo way easier to manage and carry, especially when you don't have a wallet, which is why I prefer the US system, but I agree that durability is the main issue.
I'm in Paris and can confirm that most ATMs don't give €5 bills, but some do, and it's pretty nice to withdraw a stack of fresh, brand new €5 bills that are way more convenient than coins.
Here in Belgium neither is the case (or maybe I'm just unlucky with my bank and vending machines), but that might just be Belgium being a shithole again.
I wonder how much of cash transactions are actually legitimate. It’s usually drugs, illicit services or untaxed income. While I don’t like tax just as much as next guy, the blatant dodging of is what me. Sure there are few legit privacy freaks and some genuinely unbanked. But blending those into single pot makes it much worse as they are already associated with fringes of society.
> plus it would be difficult to agree on who to feature between the 21 € states.
What do you mean? Clearly they did agree, which is why we have those design proposals. Those aren’t random people chosen by the designers, they were in the brief.
Could be that they lack details at this point, but I rate them all from trash to less-trash. Switzerland has had some outstanding bills forever right in the center of Europe, but the EU comes out with this uninspired garbage.
You know, that actually isn't the worst idea! Putting tangible results of the EU on the Euro would constantly remember people that the EU isn't just some nameless and faceless bureaucrats doing busy-work in an office building in Brussels.
The cookie notification is of course a bit silly, but a "Thanks to the EU you'll never lose another bottle cap" or a "This standardized USB-C charger is brought to you by the EU" would do wonders for its PR.
Yup terribly bad. I pick the birds: those with portraits of people are really badly fucked up and the faces do not integrate well at all with the notes.
The current ones are much better looking than any of those.
I wish I've seen this before clicking 2359 times :/ Thanks anyway at least now I can share the right experience with people so they won't suffer like me.
Yeah, either H or B bird faces would work. Both are nice.
I don't like the idea of using faces in the banknotes - when will North Macedonia get its turn and with whom? When will Ireland get its turn? Bulgaria?
Birds are neutral and nice.
Also for the back, much rather I'd have the EU map instead of clunky EU institutions, else people will just see that as more evidence of further EU intrusion.
Not sure if it is much better, the images are tiny on that version and the companion text explaining the designs seems to be missin (though that sort of text you can usually do without).
The survey is completely useless. Just let me vote on pairs of designs which I like more, then aggregate the data. It's not that hard to program and a hundred times more accurate and useful.
I rated the vertical ones the highest, I think it's genious. It automatically struck me as way more usable. You can see the denomination as you are handing it to someone. It's easier also hold a stack in your hand and count them by flipping the free end, without twisting your hand to read the numbers. Also we are more used to vertical layout in things than we hold in our hands (books, phones, etc.). Definitely a superior design, even if less usual.
Designs A and B and I are not terrible, but I'm not impressed.
Design C - the backside looks like the worst soulless corporate landing page graphics (Corporate Memphis style?).
Design D and E, H are okayish. Possibly I'd prefer something along these lines.
Design F has very strange coloring, the watercolor and sketch effect looks nice on screen, but I think more filled and more monochrome notes are more conventional and accepted, also some are bicolor. Not bad, but I'd not like it in everyday use probably.
Design G is somehow not good looking, I cannot phrase it. Both the font, and also the backsides scenes are meh, even the modernist buildings are better on some other series.
Design J : the creepy abstract cartoon people on the backside ruin it. Also somehow not aesthetically pleasing, but not catastrophic.
Every redesign introduces new (secret) watermarks, patterns that are hard to copy, so it's also a "tech" update. Eventually more and more of the details become public. By now the current banknotes are too well known and I guess the counterfeits are getting too close.
> Every redesign introduces new (secret) watermarks, patterns that are hard to copy, so it's also a "tech" update. Eventually more and more of the details become public. By now the current banknotes are too well known and I guess the counterfeits are getting too close.
But if I wanted to create counterfeit euro bank notes I could just go with the old ones, no?
Anyway, I think creating new designs just for fun is a good enough reason for me to create new notes.
Old bank notes are not in circulation forever. They are accounted for by serial numbers. Banks and ATMs can process the serials and designs and report them. Eventually bank notes get pulled out of circulation. So an old bank note is by default suspicious and gets checked more thoroughly. Counterfeiters mostly benefit by blending in with the masses, so having some old note can raise suspicion.
I love H, and I mean it - not only acceptable but even pleasing to me, quite surprising to say. A and B stayed too long in the sun, C indeed is PowerPoint heaven, D is fun but in a circus entry ticket way, E reminds me of a school book and not in the good way, F ouch my eyes too much going on, G okayish but doesn't feel like a banknote but rather... flyers? I - spilled its colors in a watercolor cleaning water way, and finally J is too photo-realistic to look banknote-ish to me.
An average lifetime of a banknote is 1-2 years for smaller amounts, 2-4 years for bigger ones. It is estimated that 15-25% of all banknotes are replaced every year. From about 30 billion individual banknotes in circulation that makes 4.5B to 7.5B each year.
So why not introduce new designs (and new protections?)
What do you mean? The various denominations intentionally have different sizes so that blind people can tell them apart by touch. Surely you're not suggesting that they should all be the same size?
While I doubt the benefit of small differences to signal the absolute value (sure, you can feel that one is bigger, but that is it 10 vs 5 bigger or 50 vs 20 bigger?), especially compared to other more helpful direct signs like the raised print, I'm not suggesting eliminating that.
But I'm suggesting varying the desin of both the absolutes (e.g., I'd prefer all of them to be smaller) and the variability (e.g, what about making the most used first 3 notes significantly different length for the easiest differentiation: 1/3, 2/3, 3/3) instead of just playing with some pics.
F looks incredible, H is also great. They are all pretty good, except for maybe A and E which I find dull. I prefer the birds and buildings, though of the finalists with people on them I find C rather striking.
Hopefully whichever wins will look like the original design after being finalized for printing, it would be a shame if they had to dull the colors or rearrange the layout for security features etc
On the 50 is Miguel de Cervantes (author of Don Quixote). On the 200 is Bertha von Suttner, the first woman to win a Nobel peace prize. I admit I had to look her up.
A) Probably my favorite. Despite not loving the overall style, the portraits actually show emotion. Von Suttner's portrait in particular conveys a lot to me.
B) Not a fan. Individual elements are well done but it doesn't feel cohesive to me.
C) Fine/unobjectionable to me.
D) I like these a lot. It feels like they really made the most of the choice of buildings by covering them up with geometric patterns and/or showing the insides.
E) I really hate the backs of these. The back designs of all the others show how the spirit of each historical figure shows up in modern life. This utterly fails to do that for Da Vinci and Curie.
F) These just don't look like banknotes to me, and I don't think the colors look good.
G) Please no.
H) Fronts look good!
I) I'm not sure I like the technology/prey animals on the front.
J) These don't feel like banknotes to me, but I think I might wind up liking them after getting used to them.
I think buildings or areas may be more useful than people. But, if people are chosen then these should be as least controversial as possible. Compare it to the USA where the orange king wants to brand everything with his old man face. The insanity brand.
Why is it all either the same people or the same birds?
Was that an explicit part of the brief artists were given?
I feel like the selection of motifs is more interesting and where more of the creative process in defining a representation of Europe lies than just how to draw and layout those motifs.
Offensively dull. One shudders to think about the endless bickering that went in to this.
May I propose 6 shades of off-white adorned with geometric shapes. €5 gets dots, €10 lines, €20 triangles and so on. €100 may have pentagrams instead of pentagons to keep Twitter on its toes.
I don’t know; I think the fact that the designs are so different from each other is actually a testament to the fact that the brief was actually pretty well written, because it allowed so many different interpretations!
And that’s only the finalist 10; I’d genuinely love to see the whole submission set.
I wonder if it would have permissible to submit the birds (obviously great) and the buildings as as they could have looked if they embodied the combined architectural prowess of the union.. in place of the vitreous crimes against aesthetics that happened to be cheap enough when construction started.
As an Austrian, it feels a bit annoying that the Germans got their one famous composer - they're kind of our thing! Why not Mozart, Strauss, Haydn, Schubert?
It's also unfortunate that the nice peaceful bird motif was paired with the ugly modern buildings on the other side.
I onve saw a €500 note when I was exchanging guilders at the fentral bank and asked if I could see one. They showed me, from behind the glass. It's big
Don't you worry. This is a political process and politicians are basically big children, so no country will ever accept notes without someone famous from their country on the note.
So al will be watered down to abstract art or animals in the end, so that the suggestion with the least amount of friction gets accepted.
Like all decision in democracy, it is not about finding the best solution, it's about the solution with the least nr of votes against it. That is why democracy never works in the long term, because it is a long, drawn out, trip to the bottom.
"
Like all decision in democracy, it is not about finding the best solution, it's about the solution with the least nr of votes against it. That is why democracy never works in the long term, because it is a long, drawn out, trip to the bottom.
"
Working democracies are the countries with most livable places on Earth..this includes many countries in Europe.
So livable that people are no longer having children? So livable, that people no longer see any hope or meaning in their lives and the future?
The highest incomes on the planet, are in monarchies like Liechtenstein and Monaco. Singapore, which cannot be called a democracy, is one of the safest countries on the planet.
Another interesting way to look at it is at the debt. The debt of most (all?) democracies is sky rocketing. That means the "livability" is an illusion paid for by borrowed money.
TBH the only acceptable approach here would be similar to coins - where each member state may print their own people on some of the notes to keep representation.
Putting 6 people of 27 member states is just asking for trouble and lacks representation.
(I still prefer the current approach of using non-existing bridgets as a motif.)
I'm sure most countries will have their pet peeves with this; I've seen a bunch of Polish people being upset about the phrasing of Marie Curie's name already.
At least you can be sure that Germans won't "adopt" them, e.g. you can often read "the german architect Hundertwasser" or "the german author Kafka" :-/
On the other side: most classic composers are from times when there was no Germany. E.g. J. S. Bach is from Sachsen-Eisenach :-)
Was gonna say the same thing. Also by the standards of the time one could argue that Austria and Germany where kinda the same thing. There's a parallel history where Austria could have ended up being another German Lander. Nationalism is a weird and now anachronic 19th century invention.
The people and birds (and I think the buildings as well) were selected by a committee beforehand, to make sure they represent all of the EU, aren't controversial, yadayada...
Yeah, the motifs was probably part of the brief as picking the symbols to represent the entire EU is incredibly political and its just best to separate that discussion from the deeply subjective "what looks best" discussion.
The worst part of this whole enterprise is not the designs per se (although the buildings look like soulless buildings from the former USSR but that is besides the point), it is that very few stores actually accept 100/200 euro notes. Even 50 euro notes can be seen as suspicious in certain shops.
So my question is why bother with a redesign when you can't even use the notes in the first place?
I would refrain from using people considering some of them may (become) controversial or are controversial depending on a country, there will never be agreement on someone who is not controversial at all and after all each country can use them on their coins if they feel the urge.
The birds idea is good, I like:
B - nice realistic
D/I/J - don't like vertical design (though I like colorful birds in J)
H - the most beautiful work of art, it would be my choice
Btw. why not use more designs at same time? I like Hong Kong approach to currency design (multiple commercial banks issue the banknotes under government regulation, three authorized banks—HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank, and Bank of China—design and print their own notes for daily use, while the government issues coins and the $10 note).
And very controversial idea, but this would be more suitable for national currency and not for eurozone - use banknotes as ad space companies can purchase, but it would have to be very very very costly space for country's budget to benefit from this. Though I like the idea of paying Pepsi with Coca Cola banknote.
That's pretty terrible. I guess only design H looks like it could be real money.
And what are the options they give? I guess historical people with weird abstract community settings or birds with office buildings. Is that all the EU represents?
Whatever they go for I hope they do not open the can of worms that is historical people, or any people for that matter. It will start all kinds of tiresome discussions and people will draw on them making it difficult use defaced bills.
If you really want historical people as a gesture of appreciation or celebration of their achievements then make that a limited edition.
I don't like having people on banknotes, for the simple reason that one day a French lobby group would decide that Napoleon is a great European who deserves to be on one.
I think the buildings are ugly, and D does its best to obscure them. So that's my winner.
> “Rivers and birds” highlights the resilience and diversity of Europe’s natural ecosystems by showcasing different stages of rivers and various bird species, emphasising the importance of nature and environmental protection. The European institutions featured on the banknotes remind us of the fundamental values of the European project, which also embraces environmental protection.
That’s Beethoven. I know his hair is a bit long, but that’s a man. He does look a bit miffed, but can you blame him? Being deaf when you’re a composer must not have been pleasant.
I didn't even know who the person on the 200€ bill is until today and I have a suspicion she was chosen by some woke EU bureaucrat. I'm sure Europe had better persons in its history.
If Maria Callas is suitable for currency, why not put Daft Punk on it?
As an Austrian, Bertha von Suttner is a big deal. First woman to win a Nobel Peace prize (and probably the reason that prize exists in the first place!), second woman to win a Nobel ever (after Curie). Your ignorance of her is not an indictment of "woke bureaucrats".
Daft Punk honestly sounds cool, but we probably shouldn't be putting any living personalities on there. Feels kinda weird.
> we probably shouldn't be putting any living personalities on there. Feels kinda weird.
Weird and ill-advised. Living people who appear on bank notes tend to be monarchs and dictators. Imagine having someone on the euro notes that suddenly becomes overtly anti-EU. Not a good call to promote someone who’s against you.
Remember when Star Trek mentioned Musk? That did not age well.
> I didn't even know who the person on the 200€ bill is until today
Considering she was a pretty big deal, it’s telling that your reaction to learning about someone important you had no knowledge of is to use bland unsubstantiated accusations to insult the person who made the pick instead of “interesting, I should’ve known, I wonder why I haven’t learned about her in school (or have since forgotten), let me deepen my understanding of who this person was and her relevance”.
The fact that this response was first upvoted, then downvoted after the person said they’d rather have Henry Kissinger¹ on the note², I think is quite telling of the kind of people HN is attracting these days.
Well, I guess every website must fall some day.
¹ Which is not only rage bait but also very dumb for a plethora of reasons, the least of which that he wasn’t European.
² And as a reminder, their complaint was calling someone a “woke bureaucrat” because the comment’s author was ignorant of a historical figure. I do wonder if they would have said the same if it had been a man.
I find the bridges to be rather brilliant, as they're distinctly European without being placeable (until Spijkenisse got feeling[1]).
The least historical governmental buildings in Europe seems like an awful choice by contrast: They're tied to a physical location in western Europe that most of us have little to no connection to. They're boring (which is not a criticism of the buildings, they're functional which is their purpose, but I'd rather not see them on coinage).
For a similar reason, the portraits are also just... fine. Greek, German, Polish-French, Spaniard, Italian, and Austrian. It's much more diverse than the buildings, but the Balkans, Nordics (including Latvia and Estonia), Benelux, and other smaller states remain unrepresented. Of course, changing anyone out would leave another unrepresented (though the obverse and reverse could both be used in harmony, why does the reverse have to be nondescript?).
If we're going for people, one thing I really like about the Swedish bills is that the person on the lowest denomination is specifically chosen to have an icon for children: Currently Astrid Lindgren and previously Selma Lagerlöf made the 20 krona bill distinctly "for the children". The choice of Bertha von Suttner for the highest denomination is one that I agree with -- and also aligned with the Swedish bank notes where the equivalent is held by Dag Hammarskjöld. Both ECB and Riksbanken chose a person best known for their pursuit of peace and unity of humankind.
Still, the beauty of the bridges is that they're European, not French or German.
All that aside, I'd hope for F or J stylistically. There's too much vectorization happening on most of the others. It feels like the others won't stand the test of time. G and C already feels ten years out of date imo.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurobridges_Spijkenisse
As I mentioned elsewhere, it's kinda strange they didn't learn the lesson from Euro coins and did multiple versions of each banknote to cover and represent every member state with at least one person.
Faces on Euro banknotes are a terrible idea. Even internationally well-known personalities are associated with certain countries, and you do not put things that represent specific countries on banknotes used in different countries.
The EU isn't a federation, and having a single currency doesn't make the eurozone any more so.
The buildings aren't as bad, being european insitution headquarters. However, as they aren't necessarily widely recognizable, they come out a bit self serving.
Is it too much to ask to consider that the people on the banknotes are/will be depicted because they are European, and not because they come from any member State in particular?
You think people of some countries might protest Gutenberg, Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Maria Callas, Beethoven, or Marrie Currie?
If such people exist, fuck em.
It's not a matter of protesting (nor is it a matter of nationalism).
It's a matter of bureocrats remembering that there are more countries in the eurozone than banknotes, and even if that wasn't the case, their denominations can be read as hierarchy.
It is this kind of myopic pettiness that prevents the EU from ever really ascending to a united and powerful bloc. It's why USA and China view them as just very easy targets to squeeze.
I read an interesting fact recently that the poorest USA state, Mississippi, has a larger economy and GDP than 1/3 of all EU members.
It is shocking that this union can function at all with how top heavy it is.
So shuffle them around. We already have a million coin designs. One side can remain constant, no problem.
I sort of disagree, the faces SHOULD foster a unified identification as European. And at least on paper they do kind of nicely, imho. No one can argue with Da Vinci. Curie is Polish-French. Callas is internationally beloved and Greek. Beethoven is potentially the second-best known world-wide behind Da Vinci, and can be claimed by the whole German-speaking area, at least Germany and Austria. Cervantes is perhaps more obscure as a face, but well-deserved and everyone knows “quixotic”. Von Suttner is the most obscure and probably overrepresents the German-speaking countries, but it’s Europe, so the pacifist angle is hard to argue against.
Everyone can think of similarly deserving people. They should do it like the coins and just have an abundance of motifs from every country. Since they’re too scared to put english text on them, put a QR code link to some short text in every language. I cringe at the idea of QR codes in general, but what are you going to do.
The buildings are all the same steel and glass bullshit and represent nothing if not the widely despised bureaucratic aspects of the EU. The birds at least look nice, but they’re boring and hyper-harmless.
I'm europeist (but no longer a federationist after the cooperation debacle that was the eurocrisis) and I have no issue with the choice of personalities.
I do have an issue with anything that might be interpreted as the proposals of some countries having had more weight that others.
There's a reason why the current Euro banknotes represent bridges that do not exist in the real world.
> Beethoven is potentially the second-best known world-wide behind Da Vinci
You mean Europeans? Because I highly doubt more ppl know about them than about Jesus. And I'd claim the most well known European is probably Hitler, through infamy.
Your issue is that people in Spain look at their note and think “da Vinci isn’t us, he’s them”.
Their idea is that they want people all over the EU to think of da Vinci as “us”. Over time, it’ll become more normal to consider luminaries from other European countries as part of the shared heritage.
That said there will be countries that may ask why their guy can’t make it to the note. Why not Herge, the Belgians might ask? The question is left as an exercise to the reader.
Your last question is something to consider in the current context of rising nationalism, which is all about the perception of being left out (even in the larger countries, where that perception is about each other).
I feel like the design guidelines were fundamentally flawed, and as a logical result none of the design proposals are better than what we already have.
The whole "some person's face" thing doesn't work because most people won't be familiar with them. Heck, you'd be lucky if the average person is familiar with their names! The birds & buildings suffer from the same issue: never seen them, can't identify them, don't care about them. And because it references real-world things there's a very genuine risk of people being upset over being underrepresented, or the person or institution being depicted getting disgraced.
What's left is the "vague depictions of people doing random things" theming, but that's neither European nor meaningful nor distinctive. You forget about it the second you stop looking at it.
The previous two series - depicting bridge types and building styles - neatly bypassed this by being something everyone could relate to, while at the same time not referencing anything specific-enough that anyone could be upset about it. Especially the first series nailed this down perfectly.
Given the mediocre design proposals we're now left with, I think Design J is the obvious best choice. It is not actively ugly, and the various bills are at least distinct enough that they are easy to tell apart. Design H isn't too bad, but the building side is just "generic glass blob in a distance" rather than anything one would remember and recognize.
> The whole "some person's face" thing doesn't work because most people won't be familiar with them.
There’s millennia of history of having coins and paper money faces that most people will not be familiar with.
> The previous two series - depicting bridge types and building styles - neatly bypassed this by being something everyone could relate to,
I don’t see much difference there. Just as many people can’t see more than “man with beard” or “bird with long legs”, I bet many people can’t seen more than “old bridge” or “modern bridge” for the current designs (what fraction of the population can discriminate the €5 ‘classical’ from the €10 ‘romanesque’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_banknotes)?)
>there's a very genuine risk of people being upset over being underrepresented
Explain yourself. Who the hell could feel upset upon seeing Marie Curie, Beethoven, da Vinci or Maria Callas? They are all very recognizable, well known European figures with astounding achievements and highly respected by any true European worth its name.
Are you suggesting we should erase them because of someone's feeling?
I've never heard of Maria Callas before. Especially ridiculous because she was born in the US and Wikipedia describes her as American and Greek.
I really dislike the back of the notes on pretty much all of them. Generic crowds of people with ugly backdrops, just feels very uninspired especially when some of the front designs are so bold
I agree. There's one Da Vinci with the Vitruvian man on the back. The back should complement the front, right?
The people choosing these banknotes put their office buildings on the money. They also seemed to have a gender quota, and have put on the 200 euro someone who is unknown to most Europeans (Marie Curie and Maria Callas were popular on the other hand).
Honestly, I enjoy plenty of benefits from the EU, but this non-representative style of decision-making makes me understand the EU-haters.
So many of these have some building as the backdrop, but all the buildings are modernist skyscrapers and uninspired office buildings
Europe doesn't have a dearth of stunning architecture. Have they all been discarded in favor of ugly straightline modernist sloptitecture because they might be construed as offensive for some reason?
> but all the buildings are modernist skyscrapers and uninspired office buildings
Because they are the european institutions, eg the EU parliament building, EU comission, etc.
They are mostly office buildings.
This sounds very self-centered. Many people already see the EU bureaucrats as something alien, let's not give them another reason to think they're selfish.
Yeah. Bad choice.
I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic; they are as extremely alien, as they are deeply “selfish”, as you put it so generously.
I know many people will see and think of the EU as a positive thing, just like how the colonists of the past rationalized their selfish harm and destruction through things like claiming to bring civilization to the savages; but under all the fluff, all the slick marketing and propaganda lies and manipulation, the indigenous European cultures and people are being destroyed right before our very eyes. Many people cheer it on while decrying how those horrible people of the past could have done the very same thing they support through the EU, only towards their very own people.
Considering the alien and hostile nature of the EU towards actual Europeans and European culture, it does seem most appropriate to have the alien, dystopian, monolithic, uninspired, cold buildings on the currency looking like alien spaceships, as a true representation of what the EU is; an alien bait and switch occupation that is devastating the indigenous people and cultures of Europe just like the ruling class did all over the rest of the planet in previous centuries.
Now the European peoples are getting the racist, narcissistic, supremacist colonization experience…even if in a kind of inverse form…that will and is destroying and devastating the indigenous people and cultures.
What’s amazing is how people cannot see that they are part of the very kind of thing they often decry others having done elsewhere in the past; indigenous European languages and dialects are dying out because they’re being killed off by EU policies by the dozens, cultural practices that are centuries and millennia old are being killed and dying out with them. Europeans don’t even see the thing that is obvious to a self-aware transatlantic person; Europe is being turned into an America. Look at America what it is now … that’s your future, kid. Do you really want to do that, be a devastated, hollow husk of what you once were, what you could have been???
Just look around you; Europe is gearing up to be a war machine, the civilian industrial base is being destroyed, the economies are being financialized, deficits are spreading, unique cultures are being destroyed and turned into corporate Disney versions of themselves! Sounds familiar!
Brutalist buildings in Brussels. Not a great choice for a continent with 2000+ years of very rich architecture history.
Also the ECB in frankfurt on the 50€
Perhaps making the notes as ugly and boring as possible will push folks off physical money onto trackable digital money that is just as soulless as the buildings on the notes.
That does not mean they were the only possible choice. Personally, I find having my continent represented by them an extreme insult.
Can you elaborate what you mean?
Are you against the idea of European cooperation in general? Or against the implementation?
If there is to be European cooperation that goes beyond heads of states talking to each other, you're going to need some kind of space where they can do that. Using that building as a symbol seems like an obvious choice albeit not a very creative one. Really struggle to see how that choice can be "extremely insulting".
The average European does not view those buildings as symbols of European cooperation. They are just another generic office building some nameless and faceless bureaucrats work in. They lack the symbolism and recognizability of some US buildings like the White House, the Capitol, or the Pentagon - which are all inherently linked to the institutions they host.
A movie showing an external shot of the White House establishes that we're going to be looking at the US President next. A movie showing an external shot of the European Parliament establishes... office drones working in the Business Factory?
An extreme insult, seriously?
It seems pretty neutral, if un-exciting, to see EU institutions displayed on Euro banknotes. It also avoids the obvious pitfall of national landmarks.
People really take offe se on everything these days.
There just shouldn’t be any buildings on those notes. Any good choices are too country specific. All of them are out imo only D & F I find actually inspired and good the rest of these designs should go straight into the bin. Stop birds, people, buildings then see what they can come up with. Gotta be better.
These are the central institutions of the European Union. That’s why there’re portrayed in the notes
They asked to put EU buildings on there to grab power and cultural capital. The EU is centralizing and consolidating by any means necessary.
These are EU government buildings; unlike the bridges in the current notes, they’re real structures, not an archetype. The EU likes a giant office block, generally.
Disclaimer: IDGAF haven't used cash in years
Europe is a continent with countries that have literally centuries of enimity and nationalism between them. You cannot put a French building on a banknote.
Bland and inoffensive is what keeps the Union together. Its why Strasbourg exists. Its why there are Dutch translators despite the fact every Dutch member of parliament speeches in English.
I'm in the EU and you absolutely can put a French building on a banknote. I'd much rather look at the Eiffel tower or the Tower of Pisa or Neuschwanstein castle than the European Court of Auditors.
Or if you like to have something modern, Paimio Sanatorium or Turning Torso.
But that defeats the purpose of having a boring glass building, or birds or modern bridges. The underpinning ideology is that europe should have no history, no culture and no identity, because suggesting anything else 1) will offend the hyper sensitivity of modern left ideologues who think that the said culture, history and identity is terrible and should only be condemned, apologised for, and buried, and 2) would be unwelcoming to immigrants as it would suggest somehow that there is a society they should adapt to rather than the other way round.
I remember a major French pro-european politician (Modem party) attempting to define Europe (in the context of integrating Turkey), as "the friends of democracy". When you can't (or rather refuse to) define your identity, the only thing left to represent it is birds, office buildings and bridges. Notre Damme de Paris or the Pantheon in Rome are just old embarrassing historical artefacts of an evil civilisation.
The underpinning ideology is that Europe (meaning the EU) should have no history, no culture and no identity because they are monopoly of the member States/nations. And, as always, if you put a monument or person from some country in the banknotes, the other states will complain
no one feels unwelcomed by the Eiffel tower
Tell that to a victim of French colonialism, or to the Germans.
I get that we wouldn't want to single out specific nations over others on the designs. But I kinda wish we would national designs like we do for the coins, one side's standardized and the other gets a custom design depending on the nation. I think we'd get a lot very neat variety, but I understand that it makes things a lot more complicated and expensive.
I don't know that it's about "Bland and inoffensive" so much as about recognition that differences are fine. Two football teams don't agree about which team is best - but they do agree the rules of football. Without that there is no game.
Having multiple languages is more of that "differences are fine". The use of Directives rather than Regulations for many purposes allows a country's government to incorporate local differences in how we do things. A Regulation applies everywhere, but the Directive just tells your government to make local law to meet some goal. What we want to achieve is the same in Paris and San Gimignano but how we do it will vary by local culture.
I mean, half of these proposals put specific people from specific countries on banknotes. So it's hard to argue that it would be impossible to do the same with buildings.
For me, across all of them only two felt actually decent for a bank note (B & E, I is okay, just not used to bank notes in that orientation, same for J, but that one should be more monochrome). Either they were too vibrant or the design was too busy/had unnecesary elements.
I also feel like the notes that had buildings (like we have now) are just.. better. The initial run of 2002-2013 remains the best aesthetically, imo.
I prefer the Birds & Rivers theme because nobody is expecting a specific bird to meet some arbitrary ideal whereas if you put identifiable humans on a banknote people start to mistake their inevitable flaws for a desirable property. I feel this more strongly for statues, but it seems desirable for the Euro or any potential international currency too.
I don't think anyone will want to become cranky and deaf because Beethoven is on a bank note, but putting people on them is rather arbitrary. The set looks too much like a compromise for political safety.
> nobody is expecting a specific bird to meet some arbitrary ideal
People will still find ways to get upset about none or too few of the birds being present in their country, or "their bird" being depicted on the "cheap" notes.
There are very few birds which are commonly seen throughout all of the EU, from cold and wet Finland to hot and dry Spain. Virtually all birds have a limited geographical living area, which means you are automatically unintentionally playing favorites with countries.
I'm partial for statues, and birds and rivers is a good theme. I feel like if they sticked to the semi-monochrome of the previous notes I'd be more favorable to them aswell. Monochrome might be the wrong word, ESL.
For reference, the two previous runs at the top of the page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_banknotes
Monochrome means "single colour". Typically shades of that colour are included, so if something was dark purple lines on a light purple background we might say that's monochrome. In some cases it's taken to mean that there's just black/ grey/ white, but here it makes sense to say that e.g. one note is green, another blue, but no individuals notes are a mix of green and blue, they're monochrome.
Since you mentioned English isn't your first language, this use of the "to stick" verb where it's about adhering to something (metaphorically in your case) has a different past participle, "stuck". You wrote "sticked" which makes sense but isn't used for this meaning today. Nobody will misunderstand but it will sound wrong to them, we'd say e.g. "Perhaps if we'd stuck with Zig the game would be finished by now" or "Somebody stuck their chewing gum to the table".
Most of these new designs are monochrome excepting that the European flag is itself blue because that's what colour the flag is. A few of them are more colourful, and I see what you mean about that adding to clutter. For their purpose they're successful because the big reason to use colour is that people with very poor sight (some of whom are legally blind but do retain some ability to determine colour) can tell a red note from a blue one, the small accents in a different colour won't affect that. If your sight is good enough to figure out it's a European flag, you don't need this cue, you can read the large numerals saying "100" nearby to determine it's a €100 note.
My favourite by far is Proposal F - Jan Robert Dünnweller. A sort of retro-modern design with a more restricted use of colour, like you suggest. This one really pops and is quite unique.
The others, for the most part, aren't necessarily bad, but they are a bit boring and derivative.
> if you put identifiable humans on a banknote people start to mistake their inevitable flaws for a desirable property
Does the same logic extend all elevated positions? A person in a national portrait gallery, a person with a statue, a person with an olympic medal or a nobel prize, a person with a fancy title like president or queen?
Or is there something specific about bank notes that makes them more problematic?
They are Euro bank notes. They are supposed to represent all of the EU. If there's even the possibility of someone getting upset over a specific portrayal you have failed at your one task.
I can't exactly get upset over "the concept of Renaissance architecture". I can get upset over, say, Beethoven fighting his sister-in-law to get the custody of her son.
You may have noticed that all the people on these banknotes are, much like on US banknotes, dead. So that insulates them from a lot of things which happen to living people if we reconsider them.
We can and do take away honours from living people, you might remember that Paula Vennells had an OBE, but that was removed because while she hasn't and likely won't ever be actually prosecuted for it, it's obviously her fault that so many UK subpostmasters were convicted of crimes they didn't commit and in some cases even committed suicide.
Likewise the present King of England's brother would in the ordinary course of things be a pretty important guy with the title Prince and so on. But he's not, he's just Andrew because even though again he's unlikely to face prosecution it does seem like he fucked an underage girl trafficked by Epstein so the King took away his titles.
But for example Oscar Pistorius has several medals for running - not just in paralympic events but straight up against people with both legs and no running blades. The medals weren't retracted when he murdered somebody or even when he was sent to prison for the murders. Oscar still ran really fast and the medals stand. But hopefully we are clear that "Was very fast" and "Is a terrible person" are compatible ideas.
Everyone on these banknotes are dead too?
They literally said they consider statues more problematic.
> a person with a fancy title like president
"President" is not a fancy title. It is, in fact, a title specifically chosen to be boring and unglamorous.
You've never had to bartend with a seagull.
Next crows will be holding you at gun point for the crow looking notes.
> same for J, but that one should be more monochrome
The color is actually the main reason I dislike that design the least!
All the monochrome blobs do have a more traditional bank note feeling, but the complete lack of contrast makes them unmemorable and hard to identify. You can't trivially tell them apart at a quick glance, you have to either actively read the number or identify it by color. But the numbers aren't big enough for reading, and there are a lot of colorblind people.
Try opening them up in a photo editing tool. Blur them and desaturate them a bunch. Can you still tell them apart?
I think H works too. It's a good compromise between fresh colors and familiar design.
A truly horrible design, lacking any finesse or style.
A) Front is nice, but I can't get over the shadow people in the backside
B) The most boring of the options. The tiny text with the bird facts should not be there.
C) Corporate hellscape.
D) wtf are those hands doing here
E) Again fronts look better than backs; fronts are very traditional bank-note to me.
F) Most interesting option. Certainly feels different than any other bank note I recall.
G) Ugh random vector shapes and gradients. Ugly in same ways as C)
H) Very inoffensive, very boring. Competing with B) in the most boring category.
I) Bit too much going on. The river map thing on the back side should be distinct in each note
J) The visual "sketchy" style just doesn't feel right here.
Ultimately F is visually my favourite although like many others I do dislike the "famous people" theme. Design I could be very nice with some tweaks
H) is my favorite. Nicely detailed birds, less crowded designs.
Anything with a face, I'm tired of that trope of banknote design.
D) is notably the one mixing best vertical and horizontal view.
I guess we are used to a horizontal layout, some try to be bold with completely vertical but it won't be easy to identify in my wallet.
So I would grant D) that fine balance argument.
I like the ones you find boring (but not the corporate Memphis ones) - money is a serious matter, so it's IMO supposed to look serious and a little boring.
I feel like banknotes is one of the few common-places that EU could convey some sort of "shared vision/purpose" that is largely missing in general. From this perspective "boring" as in buildings etc are not very good options as they do not convey anything positive, and make it look further "cold and distant" from people. While options like F show a vision which europe could aim towards.
Of course then, on the other hand, the boring options are in this sense the most honest ones.
+1 for boring!
While I don't really particularly like any of the designs, the F option is absolutely wild and I feel it would really make the Euro notes standout in the world. I don't know that it would make for a good bank note design, but it is visibly distinct.
The birds on J is incredibly beautiful, but that's somewhat offset by the building on the reverse.
I found it hard to vote just by saying "I like this design" for each one individually. Since we have a set of limited option, I'd rather compare and pick the ones I prefer in comparison of the others.
I helped Claude build a simple web app (static, local, oss) to make you choose among pairs, to progressively determine your personal preference.
It outputs your top 3, you can share the summary like this:
It's very WIP, but I found this approach useful to fill the survey, so why not shareRecto Verso Euro My favourite euro banknote designs: Design B Design H Design E → https://pil0u.github.io/recto-verso-euro/#r=BHECADFIGJ&c=100
Very cool, it made me realize I really like landscape designs which are generic.
I scanned through it and settled on Design H as well, birds and buildings. One thing I started to notice while looking over the design that I had a strong preference for the number to be in the corners. The last two one are "portrait" which feels weird to me but might be more appealing to a younger generation.
In Canada, we have ONE bill with a vertical orientation. [0] The other notes (5$, 20$, 50$, 100$), though designed a bit earlier than then vertical 10$ note but definitely in the same style, are horizontal. There is also a discontinued, but still circulating, horizontal 10$ bill.
I have zero reason to complain honestly. It's never impacted me negatively at all... but aestetically it feels weird when mixed together with other bills.
If you're sorting money, you'll already know which ones are 10$ because they're that colour of purple... but the number won't be facing the right way. If you're making an ATM UI that lets people pick what mix of bills to withdrawl, RBC chose to show pictures of the bills for some reason, featuring the old horizontal 10$ bill (which it doesn't dispense) because clearly the actual 10$ bill wouldn't fit in the UI. [1] (I didn't expect this to be illustrated by a random youtube video, but it turns out the internet has everything.)
Is that a problem? No. Is it juuust weird enough that family from overseas visting me will mention how weird it is every single time they use an ATM? Yes.
If the euro switched to vertical all at once maybe that wouldn't be as weird, but the old horizontal bills are going to be circulating for a long time.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_ten-dollar_note
[1] https://youtu.be/sRxo_L9ODwo?si=pihBzi4XTaLoXngF&t=47 (Warning, you have better things to do with your time than watch the slowest person ever withdraw two 10$ bills)
I can get behind some comments here that the buildings are representative of the institution of Europe, not the people. I love the birds, and probably naturally settled to the one where the buildings are less visible ^^
Added 20+ languages in the mix, based on the available languages in the survey
Hope it's the birds. I suppose there's no way to vote or anything with the current level of technological advancement, and the final design will be chosen by professional choosers that are handsomely paid for their hard work?
There's a public survey: https://surveys.ecb.europa.eu/10b/neweuro/
There's a survey link. Not sure it works as Cloudflare blocks me from accessing it. Oh the irony, having my opinion as EU citizen about an EU issue blocked by some silly US company.
I want some birds too!
Share a screenshot of the block?
It's the typical Cloudflare error where it tells you "Your browser sucks", not sure what a screenshot would help. :)
It's a shame due to Brexit there will be no Count Binface €10.
The Monnaie de Paris could still do a coin series with him, just to spite Farage.
I do hope we get Charles Martel though.
The main benefit of Brexit is that the EU is now able to use English as a neutral universal language which is both commonly-known and doesn't favor any individual member state.
Clearly the best choice would've been to extend this and put British buildings or British historical people on the next generation of Euro notes. It would favor no EU country, so clearly it is the most neutral option. /s
Birds are clearly superior.
I don't like to have silhouettes instead of people on the back, and that buildings related to the current institutions are featured on so many designs
These are a current necessities, but nothing to sanctuarize for the future. The only thing that should remain stable in Europe are ideas, and the Swiss got it better on their notes
> These are a current necessities, but nothing to sanctuarize for the future.
Although the ECB does not today "withdraw" notes in the sense that they cease to be valid for most purposes, it does deliberately destroy old notes and issue new ones with different images to replace them, so the original series must be getting pretty rare by now - not rare enough to be worth serious collectors paying money for it, but your ten year old may never have seen an actual old Euro €500 note even though in principle those still are valid money in the Eurozone.
> deliberately destroy old notes and issue new ones with different images to replace them
Big part of the reason for this appears to be security. Many years ago a high-ranking official from Finnish central bank told in an interview that bank notes need to be redesigned approximately once per decade. Reason is that it takes about that long for the materials and printing technology to get commoditised enough for criminal enterprises to be able to start manufacturing "high-grade" forgeries at any real scale.
Every generation of bank notes employs a whole bunch of newly developed technologies and tricks that make the notes themselves distinctive, as well as incredibly difficult[ß] to forge.
ß: Some of it is down to tightly locked down and guarded speciality supply chains. Some is due to advances in microprinting and ilk. If you had unlimited resources, you could arrange to have the necessary equipment, supplies, staff and materials to print your own forged money. It'd just be slow, low-yield and very expensive.
Design H ftw
Birds aren't real.
Seems like some people are missing the joke
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birds_Aren%27t_Real
Aren't they? Pictures are quite small, but B50 is clearly a stork. B100 looks like some kind of heron maybe, not sure. B10 is a kingfisher, I suppose. I don't know, they look real enough to me.
That's exactly why they are a better choice, like the imaginary bridges on current Euro banknotes.
The selection of people is also quite poor but that's because people are a poor choice: Most notable historical people are very linked to specific countries, often against other countries so picking neutral ones is hard. They also clearly decided to have an equal number of men and women, which makes it even harder. Obviously there aren't enough different banknotes to represent every country, either.
Exactly.
Faces are a terrible idea for a common currency shared by 21 countries.
You have to pick one writer, good that the English left for good so Shakespeare's out, but how do the French feel about Cervantes vs. Victor Hugo?
The Poles complaining that they didn't get enough recognition because Marie Curie's maiden name isn't given enough prominence should tell you all there is to know about this being a good idea.
> how do the French feel about Cervantes vs. Victor Hugo?
I don't think anybody would mind since there's already Marie Curie, which is an obvious choice because she's both Polish and French. I don't know how the Polish take it but the French have no particular feelings about her being Polish as well.
You still need to tread carefully as @ncruses said. So not Marie Curie but Maria Skłodowska-Curie.
Maria Skłodowska-Curie was very helpful, at trying to solve #2 and #5 countries (by population) in one stroke. Good that the big 5 EU countries were simple enough to cover.
But why are a Greek-American, and an - unknown to the majority of Europeans - Austrian in there?
How many counties more populous than Austria are unrepresented? Do all EU countries count, or just EZ? (Poland is not EZ, is represented, still complained)
It's an impossible list. Europeans don't necessarily have shared heroes, and if they did, some of these wouldn't be top 6.
Heroes fought and died fighting countries that are in the EU today. Obviously you can't have them on the banknotes.
As for the smaller countries- well let's face it do you think anyone in Europe gives a shit about Dutch or Estonian history and culture? Its France and Germany all the way down I'm afraid. At least we still have the veto.
Maybe your heroes did.
And no one gives a shit about the (18 million) Dutch, but we picked Bertha von Suttner.
They could have done the same thing they did with the coins and make every country put their own faces in there.
Note that even for that, countries had to chose neutral things not to create problems.
I feel like birds are the superior front, but boring EU buildings are the worse back.
I'd like the birds front with the other option for the back (public squares or something?)
Birds are the way.
I want someone to slap a blackbird on my bank notes. Preferably all denominations.
I try to pay everything in cash as much as I can, so it's nice to see the banknotes get some love from the ECB (even though the absence of €1 and €2 banknotes still hurts…).
I think it's a bit strange to feature people on these, plus it would be difficult to agree on who to feature between the 21 € states. The birds look cool! But it would have been nice to modernize the current architecture-based design rather than feature random EU office buildings.
> absence of €1 and €2 banknotes
The US style? I much prefer the Japanese style instead (where €5 would be a coin instead of a note). When our largest coin is too small to buy a drink at a vending machine we've got a problem. ATMs don't turn over €5 notes anyway, so their existence is painfully awkward.
Why, though? I'd much prefer not to carry any coins at all, ever since I gave up and stopped fighting the Big Brother (I applaud everyone who still does, but it just didn't seem like my struggle was productive). I mean, to think of it, coins never were very nice to use, I just wasn't bothered by it, because the volume of cash on me was quite significant anyway. Now it's not and I just don't carry any coins at all. Paper is so much nicer to handle. I still need to have some cash just in case, but I'd simply "forgive" any change below 1€ now. I don't feel rich enough to forgive everything below 5€ though.
Coins are far more durable and usually easier for machines to properly sense. If you're using vending machines to buy drinks it's nice just dropping a coin or two into a machine and getting a beverage. Notes can get worn and fail to read properly by machines taking bills in the field. When you need like 5 of the most widely circulated coins for a single drink it gets annoying though.
I miss seeing machines that would bend a 12oz can of soda for 25¢. Those were the days.
I sometimes go to coin-op car washes, it sucks having to punch a fist full of quarters into the machine for a quick wash.
Coins don't fold, though. Carrying a few bills around in a money clip is trivial, coins quickly devolve into carrying a giant pile of loose change with near-zero value.
The main reason I don't use more cash is that it is so inconvenient. I don't want any coins back as change, and always telling cashiers to keep the change when the smallest bill is €5 is just too much for me.
> coins quickly devolve into carrying a giant pile of loose change with near-zero value.
Which is why it'd be better if they weren't all nearly zero value in today's money. Coins of tiny value really suck, I agree. What am I going to do with nickels and dimes, really? So useless.
I also agree bills made from that plastic material seem to hold up better and scan better by machines than the "paper" used in USD, so that's less of a concern.
Bills are imo way easier to manage and carry, especially when you don't have a wallet, which is why I prefer the US system, but I agree that durability is the main issue.
> I miss seeing machines that would bend a 12oz can of soda for 25¢. Those were the days.
A bending machine?
Oops, what a funny autocorrect. A vending machine.
ATS return 5€, or did I miss something? Also: vending machines can take notes as well, so I really don't get the argument
Most ATMs I have used don't. Most of the time it is 20+ ime.
I'm in Paris and can confirm that most ATMs don't give €5 bills, but some do, and it's pretty nice to withdraw a stack of fresh, brand new €5 bills that are way more convenient than coins.
Here in Belgium neither is the case (or maybe I'm just unlucky with my bank and vending machines), but that might just be Belgium being a shithole again.
Okay interesting, I don't use much cash! Gonna try in Germany, but I always took out x5€ haha
Me too, #NormalizeCash
Cash is freedom.
Cash is king.
That’s not meant to be interpreted literally tho
I wonder how much of cash transactions are actually legitimate. It’s usually drugs, illicit services or untaxed income. While I don’t like tax just as much as next guy, the blatant dodging of is what me. Sure there are few legit privacy freaks and some genuinely unbanked. But blending those into single pot makes it much worse as they are already associated with fringes of society.
How could it possibly be interpreted literally?
Instating a monarchy with cash as regent? How would that work in daily life?
> plus it would be difficult to agree on who to feature between the 21 € states.
What do you mean? Clearly they did agree, which is why we have those design proposals. Those aren’t random people chosen by the designers, they were in the brief.
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2025/html/ecb.pr2501...
Could be that they lack details at this point, but I rate them all from trash to less-trash. Switzerland has had some outstanding bills forever right in the center of Europe, but the EU comes out with this uninspired garbage.
I did not expect anything else.
The proposal J with the birds has some charm, but doesn’t work as a whole.
There were some clearly superior suggestions they left out: https://xcancel.com/The_Davos_Man/status/2080383908823081426
;)
You know, that actually isn't the worst idea! Putting tangible results of the EU on the Euro would constantly remember people that the EU isn't just some nameless and faceless bureaucrats doing busy-work in an office building in Brussels.
The cookie notification is of course a bit silly, but a "Thanks to the EU you'll never lose another bottle cap" or a "This standardized USB-C charger is brought to you by the EU" would do wonders for its PR.
Flip sides on all of them look like they are taken from a random free vector illustrations archive.
Yup terribly bad. I pick the birds: those with portraits of people are really badly fucked up and the faces do not integrate well at all with the notes.
The current ones are much better looking than any of those.
A better link might be https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/banknotes/future_banknotes/ht..., which has all of the proposals on a single page for easier browsing.
Thanks! changed from https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/banknotes/future_banknotes/ht... above. I've put the original URL in the toptext.
I wish I've seen this before clicking 2359 times :/ Thanks anyway at least now I can share the right experience with people so they won't suffer like me.
Also I like birds. H looks nice.
Yeah, either H or B bird faces would work. Both are nice.
I don't like the idea of using faces in the banknotes - when will North Macedonia get its turn and with whom? When will Ireland get its turn? Bulgaria?
Birds are neutral and nice.
Also for the back, much rather I'd have the EU map instead of clunky EU institutions, else people will just see that as more evidence of further EU intrusion.
Not sure if it is much better, the images are tiny on that version and the companion text explaining the designs seems to be missin (though that sort of text you can usually do without).
The actual images are pretty big so you can just use your browser's native zooming capabilities.
I found that much nicer than constantly clicking to show the reverse sides, but to each their own!
The article one also misses on the size differences across notes. Not the biggest deal, but should be shown.
Chat Control and age verification belong there.
We don't have it. Some US states have passed those laws already, weirdly enough.
The survey is completely useless. Just let me vote on pairs of designs which I like more, then aggregate the data. It's not that hard to program and a hundred times more accurate and useful.
Incidentally, there’s an open role at the ECB for “Traineeship in environmental sustainability in banknote production”, sounds like a fun job for the right person: https://talent.ecb.europa.eu/careers/JobDetail/Traineeship-i...
Are they going to switch to plastic while they're at it?
That's the only thing I'll miss if Romania ever switches to Euro. Cash you can launder. Literally.
Paper cash is made from cotton fiber, it easily survives the washing machine.
Euroes are cotton fiber and washable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mCVOAXLg00
I assumed everywhere except the USA had converted to plastic... It's so much better.
B (with the bird) brings back 100 guilder vibes. https://europost.nl/winkel/bankbiljetten/nederland-ba/nederl...
What’s wrong with the existing bank notes? I like their design
The only reason I can think of for this is a push to a cashless society.
Specially the vertical banknotes, what is up with that?
I rated the vertical ones the highest, I think it's genious. It automatically struck me as way more usable. You can see the denomination as you are handing it to someone. It's easier also hold a stack in your hand and count them by flipping the free end, without twisting your hand to read the numbers. Also we are more used to vertical layout in things than we hold in our hands (books, phones, etc.). Definitely a superior design, even if less usual.
Switzerland has been using vertical bank notes for a while and they are amazing in a modern wallet where they are stored folded.
> Specially the vertical banknotes, what is up with that?
They look awesome. Design I is amazing
Sure, but people hold them and look at them horizontally, elderly people will get super-confused.
Yes, elderly people cannot fathom things that are not horizontal in nature...
the bland glass and steel buildings made me think some of these were actually parody.
I wonder why do we need new notes... but I guess running some competition is not a tragedy.
You can see all side-by-side here: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/banknotes/future_banknotes/ht...
My takes:
Designs A and B and I are not terrible, but I'm not impressed.
Design C - the backside looks like the worst soulless corporate landing page graphics (Corporate Memphis style?).
Design D and E, H are okayish. Possibly I'd prefer something along these lines.
Design F has very strange coloring, the watercolor and sketch effect looks nice on screen, but I think more filled and more monochrome notes are more conventional and accepted, also some are bicolor. Not bad, but I'd not like it in everyday use probably.
Design G is somehow not good looking, I cannot phrase it. Both the font, and also the backsides scenes are meh, even the modernist buildings are better on some other series.
Design J : the creepy abstract cartoon people on the backside ruin it. Also somehow not aesthetically pleasing, but not catastrophic.
> I wonder why do we need new notes...
Every redesign introduces new (secret) watermarks, patterns that are hard to copy, so it's also a "tech" update. Eventually more and more of the details become public. By now the current banknotes are too well known and I guess the counterfeits are getting too close.
> Every redesign introduces new (secret) watermarks, patterns that are hard to copy, so it's also a "tech" update. Eventually more and more of the details become public. By now the current banknotes are too well known and I guess the counterfeits are getting too close.
But if I wanted to create counterfeit euro bank notes I could just go with the old ones, no?
Anyway, I think creating new designs just for fun is a good enough reason for me to create new notes.
Old bank notes are not in circulation forever. They are accounted for by serial numbers. Banks and ATMs can process the serials and designs and report them. Eventually bank notes get pulled out of circulation. So an old bank note is by default suspicious and gets checked more thoroughly. Counterfeiters mostly benefit by blending in with the masses, so having some old note can raise suspicion.
Maybe it is also just fun...
The old ones get pulled out of circulation and usually stop being accepted at most places, or at least get more scrutiny.
The original euro banknotes were replaced between 2013 and 2019 and are still accepted everywhere you can use the new ones.
I love H, and I mean it - not only acceptable but even pleasing to me, quite surprising to say. A and B stayed too long in the sun, C indeed is PowerPoint heaven, D is fun but in a circus entry ticket way, E reminds me of a school book and not in the good way, F ouch my eyes too much going on, G okayish but doesn't feel like a banknote but rather... flyers? I - spilled its colors in a watercolor cleaning water way, and finally J is too photo-realistic to look banknote-ish to me.
PS you can even vote for them! https://surveys.ecb.europa.eu/10b/neweuro/
same here, H has class, contrast and is just so pleasing to look at!
> I wonder why do we need new notes...
An average lifetime of a banknote is 1-2 years for smaller amounts, 2-4 years for bigger ones. It is estimated that 15-25% of all banknotes are replaced every year. From about 30 billion individual banknotes in circulation that makes 4.5B to 7.5B each year.
So why not introduce new designs (and new protections?)
Is size not part of "shared identity and values"?
Also, if you like animals, why not use different kinds for easier differentiation rather than stick to birds users will not even know names for?
What do you mean? The various denominations intentionally have different sizes so that blind people can tell them apart by touch. Surely you're not suggesting that they should all be the same size?
While I doubt the benefit of small differences to signal the absolute value (sure, you can feel that one is bigger, but that is it 10 vs 5 bigger or 50 vs 20 bigger?), especially compared to other more helpful direct signs like the raised print, I'm not suggesting eliminating that.
But I'm suggesting varying the desin of both the absolutes (e.g., I'd prefer all of them to be smaller) and the variability (e.g, what about making the most used first 3 notes significantly different length for the easiest differentiation: 1/3, 2/3, 3/3) instead of just playing with some pics.
looks cheap. i want my money to look fancy, not like a brochure from an airline.
Interestingly some of them have socialist/soviet design but are all bad in their own ways.
- Birds combined with concrete block builds
- dead old people (and grumpy looking in the case of beethoven) combined with concrete blocks
- busy and abstract designs that end up being meaningless
Bland, boring & repetitive designs - what else can one expect from a technocracy.
Where is inspiration and future when europe continues to look back to the glories past?
> Bland, boring & repetitive designs - what else can one expect from a technocracy.
The first two generations of Euro bills, for example. Not bland, not especially boring, not repetitive.
F looks incredible, H is also great. They are all pretty good, except for maybe A and E which I find dull. I prefer the birds and buildings, though of the finalists with people on them I find C rather striking. Hopefully whichever wins will look like the original design after being finalized for printing, it would be a shame if they had to dull the colors or rearrange the layout for security features etc
I'm not trying to start a debate about relevance, but I can't recognize the faces on the 50 and 200 noted. An author and a "nature lover", I guess ?
On the 50 is Miguel de Cervantes (author of Don Quixote). On the 200 is Bertha von Suttner, the first woman to win a Nobel peace prize. I admit I had to look her up.
Decent enough, but quite boring. The nicest notes I know about currently are the Norwegian ones https://www.norges-bank.no/tema/Sedler-og-mynter/gyldige-sed...
But the Canadian ones are physically impressive, they don't really crumble, and seem immune to both liquid and tearing.
I like the Swiss franc banknotes personally
A) Probably my favorite. Despite not loving the overall style, the portraits actually show emotion. Von Suttner's portrait in particular conveys a lot to me.
B) Not a fan. Individual elements are well done but it doesn't feel cohesive to me.
C) Fine/unobjectionable to me.
D) I like these a lot. It feels like they really made the most of the choice of buildings by covering them up with geometric patterns and/or showing the insides.
E) I really hate the backs of these. The back designs of all the others show how the spirit of each historical figure shows up in modern life. This utterly fails to do that for Da Vinci and Curie.
F) These just don't look like banknotes to me, and I don't think the colors look good.
G) Please no.
H) Fronts look good!
I) I'm not sure I like the technology/prey animals on the front.
J) These don't feel like banknotes to me, but I think I might wind up liking them after getting used to them.
art from Milos Zlatanovic for Serbian notes is still unmatched.
Yeah but would Croatia use notes designed by a Serb?
Never underestimate the pettiness of man.
I think buildings or areas may be more useful than people. But, if people are chosen then these should be as least controversial as possible. Compare it to the USA where the orange king wants to brand everything with his old man face. The insanity brand.
It's gonna be E. The birds are nice, but there's no way they do the birds. The other ones with people are too photorealistic or too cartoonish.
While other countries are cashless
The ones with EU buildings look like banknotes of the DDR.
Why is it all either the same people or the same birds?
Was that an explicit part of the brief artists were given?
I feel like the selection of motifs is more interesting and where more of the creative process in defining a representation of Europe lies than just how to draw and layout those motifs.
Yes, the motifs were selected ~1.5y ago: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2025/html/ecb.pr2501...
Offensively dull. One shudders to think about the endless bickering that went in to this.
May I propose 6 shades of off-white adorned with geometric shapes. €5 gets dots, €10 lines, €20 triangles and so on. €100 may have pentagrams instead of pentagons to keep Twitter on its toes.
I don’t know; I think the fact that the designs are so different from each other is actually a testament to the fact that the brief was actually pretty well written, because it allowed so many different interpretations!
And that’s only the finalist 10; I’d genuinely love to see the whole submission set.
I wonder if it would have permissible to submit the birds (obviously great) and the buildings as as they could have looked if they embodied the combined architectural prowess of the union.. in place of the vitreous crimes against aesthetics that happened to be cheap enough when construction started.
Pentagons are plenty occult fnord!
As an Austrian, it feels a bit annoying that the Germans got their one famous composer - they're kind of our thing! Why not Mozart, Strauss, Haydn, Schubert?
It's also unfortunate that the nice peaceful bird motif was paired with the ugly modern buildings on the other side.
> Mozart
I don't want to open old wounds but Mozart's nationality is debated and warrants its own long Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart%27s_nationality
> Germans got their one famous composer
I think you just made J.S. Bach roll over in his grave.
And don't forget: Brahms, Handel, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Richard Strauss, Wagner.
The competition is not so one-sided.
Composers are an austrian thing? lol Europe has plenty of composers all over, especially Germany
Bertha von Suttner on the 200 EUR is Austrian
I've never seen a 200€ note irl (and not the no more printed but still legal tender 500€ either)
I onve saw a €500 note when I was exchanging guilders at the fentral bank and asked if I could see one. They showed me, from behind the glass. It's big
Don't you worry. This is a political process and politicians are basically big children, so no country will ever accept notes without someone famous from their country on the note.
So al will be watered down to abstract art or animals in the end, so that the suggestion with the least amount of friction gets accepted.
Like all decision in democracy, it is not about finding the best solution, it's about the solution with the least nr of votes against it. That is why democracy never works in the long term, because it is a long, drawn out, trip to the bottom.
" Like all decision in democracy, it is not about finding the best solution, it's about the solution with the least nr of votes against it. That is why democracy never works in the long term, because it is a long, drawn out, trip to the bottom. "
Working democracies are the countries with most livable places on Earth..this includes many countries in Europe.
So livable that people are no longer having children? So livable, that people no longer see any hope or meaning in their lives and the future?
The highest incomes on the planet, are in monarchies like Liechtenstein and Monaco. Singapore, which cannot be called a democracy, is one of the safest countries on the planet.
Another interesting way to look at it is at the debt. The debt of most (all?) democracies is sky rocketing. That means the "livability" is an illusion paid for by borrowed money.
democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried
nothing works in the long term for the right definition of long
TBH the only acceptable approach here would be similar to coins - where each member state may print their own people on some of the notes to keep representation.
Putting 6 people of 27 member states is just asking for trouble and lacks representation.
(I still prefer the current approach of using non-existing bridgets as a motif.)
I'm sure most countries will have their pet peeves with this; I've seen a bunch of Polish people being upset about the phrasing of Marie Curie's name already.
At least you can be sure that Germans won't "adopt" them, e.g. you can often read "the german architect Hundertwasser" or "the german author Kafka" :-/
On the other side: most classic composers are from times when there was no Germany. E.g. J. S. Bach is from Sachsen-Eisenach :-)
In a similar vein, who gets to claim Nicola Tesla?
Europe used to be much more of a mess than today's neatly drawn nation states, retroactively assigning origin is a silly endeavour.
Or Adolf Hitler, who was clearly Austrian! He kinda made up being German by himself, so it doesn't count.
(Edited "Germany" to German - "Germany" was an interesting typo and not entirely wrong: He said "One people, one empire, one leader!")
Because he composed the anthem?
Beethoven was born in the 18th century. Germany did not exist yet.
Was gonna say the same thing. Also by the standards of the time one could argue that Austria and Germany where kinda the same thing. There's a parallel history where Austria could have ended up being another German Lander. Nationalism is a weird and now anachronic 19th century invention.
The people and birds (and I think the buildings as well) were selected by a committee beforehand, to make sure they represent all of the EU, aren't controversial, yadayada...
Yeah, the motifs was probably part of the brief as picking the symbols to represent the entire EU is incredibly political and its just best to separate that discussion from the deeply subjective "what looks best" discussion.
I love they don't explain what's in the banknote. Am I suppose to know everything? jeez
They’re called birds. They fly and make weird noises.
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2025/html/ecb.pr2501...
Proposal E from Myrsini Vardopoulou is absolutely superior.
The worst part of this whole enterprise is not the designs per se (although the buildings look like soulless buildings from the former USSR but that is besides the point), it is that very few stores actually accept 100/200 euro notes. Even 50 euro notes can be seen as suspicious in certain shops.
So my question is why bother with a redesign when you can't even use the notes in the first place?
They really shouldn't be people. Birds are fine, but I like the bridges, why are the moving away from those?
Perhaps because they don't want to have only Dutch landmarks on the notes?
Definitely birds all the way, with fashionable vertical design.
I would refrain from using people considering some of them may (become) controversial or are controversial depending on a country, there will never be agreement on someone who is not controversial at all and after all each country can use them on their coins if they feel the urge.
The birds idea is good, I like:
B - nice realistic
D/I/J - don't like vertical design (though I like colorful birds in J)
H - the most beautiful work of art, it would be my choice
Btw. why not use more designs at same time? I like Hong Kong approach to currency design (multiple commercial banks issue the banknotes under government regulation, three authorized banks—HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank, and Bank of China—design and print their own notes for daily use, while the government issues coins and the $10 note).
And very controversial idea, but this would be more suitable for national currency and not for eurozone - use banknotes as ad space companies can purchase, but it would have to be very very very costly space for country's budget to benefit from this. Though I like the idea of paying Pepsi with Coca Cola banknote.
I like B best
That's pretty terrible. I guess only design H looks like it could be real money.
And what are the options they give? I guess historical people with weird abstract community settings or birds with office buildings. Is that all the EU represents?
Whatever they go for I hope they do not open the can of worms that is historical people, or any people for that matter. It will start all kinds of tiresome discussions and people will draw on them making it difficult use defaced bills.
If you really want historical people as a gesture of appreciation or celebration of their achievements then make that a limited edition.
I don't like having people on banknotes, for the simple reason that one day a French lobby group would decide that Napoleon is a great European who deserves to be on one.
I think the buildings are ugly, and D does its best to obscure them. So that's my winner.
F has very strong "Soviet children's book" vibes.
What's with all the birds? Also I like A the best. It's very modern.
> What's with all the birds?
From the brief:
> “Rivers and birds” highlights the resilience and diversity of Europe’s natural ecosystems by showcasing different stages of rivers and various bird species, emphasising the importance of nature and environmental protection. The European institutions featured on the banknotes remind us of the fundamental values of the European project, which also embraces environmental protection.
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2025/html/ecb.pr2501...
Was hoping for some cookie banners
Should let companies advertise on banknotes.
Announcement release: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2026/html/ecb.pr2607...
I kept wondering what all the people and birds were, there's a table on this Motifs page: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2025/html/ecb.pr2501...
I and J are bad fits.
E
Who is the smug lady?
Also was curious, it is Maria Callas. Opera singer.
The angry one is Ludwig van Beethoven.
I guess of the designs with people I only like designs E and F. There the expressions don't look too odd. Takes some getting used too though.
That’s Beethoven. I know his hair is a bit long, but that’s a man. He does look a bit miffed, but can you blame him? Being deaf when you’re a composer must not have been pleasant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_van_Beethoven
If you don’t recognise someone else, they are named in the brief.
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2025/html/ecb.pr2501...
I mean. Put famous Europeans on it. Socrates, Platon, Leonardo, Newton, Leibnitz, Einstein, Hitler....
I don't like the designs.
I didn't even know who the person on the 200€ bill is until today and I have a suspicion she was chosen by some woke EU bureaucrat. I'm sure Europe had better persons in its history.
If Maria Callas is suitable for currency, why not put Daft Punk on it?
As an Austrian, Bertha von Suttner is a big deal. First woman to win a Nobel Peace prize (and probably the reason that prize exists in the first place!), second woman to win a Nobel ever (after Curie). Your ignorance of her is not an indictment of "woke bureaucrats".
Daft Punk honestly sounds cool, but we probably shouldn't be putting any living personalities on there. Feels kinda weird.
Compared to all other figures from European history, she is kind of a random figure.
> we probably shouldn't be putting any living personalities on there. Feels kinda weird.
Weird and ill-advised. Living people who appear on bank notes tend to be monarchs and dictators. Imagine having someone on the euro notes that suddenly becomes overtly anti-EU. Not a good call to promote someone who’s against you.
Remember when Star Trek mentioned Musk? That did not age well.
https://www.cbr.com/star-trek-discovery-elon-musk-joke-star-...
I'd rather have Henry Kissinger on the note.
Yikes.
> I didn't even know who the person on the 200€ bill is until today
Considering she was a pretty big deal, it’s telling that your reaction to learning about someone important you had no knowledge of is to use bland unsubstantiated accusations to insult the person who made the pick instead of “interesting, I should’ve known, I wonder why I haven’t learned about her in school (or have since forgotten), let me deepen my understanding of who this person was and her relevance”.
The fact that this response was first upvoted, then downvoted after the person said they’d rather have Henry Kissinger¹ on the note², I think is quite telling of the kind of people HN is attracting these days.
Well, I guess every website must fall some day.
¹ Which is not only rage bait but also very dumb for a plethora of reasons, the least of which that he wasn’t European.
² And as a reminder, their complaint was calling someone a “woke bureaucrat” because the comment’s author was ignorant of a historical figure. I do wonder if they would have said the same if it had been a man.