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 G and C already feels ten years out of date imo.
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
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
> 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?
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.
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 ^^
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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?)
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
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?
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 :-)
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 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.
Yeah, I don't know why the cleaners of the parliament buildings aren't putting forward their own economic proposals either, clearly they have time to sit sometimes, might as well write proposals for new regulation.
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
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