Every New Year’s Day generally brings an anniversary or two – some happy, some sad.
The milestone which popped into view on Tuesday, however, was probably just divisive – assuming you noticed it during the fireworks. For the very first moments of 2019 marked the 20th birthday of the Euro – the currency which stands as the official unit of transaction in 19 of the (current) 28 member states of the European Union.
It slipped into existence in notional form on January 1 1999 (although paper money and coinage would not enter circulation for three further years). In doing so, it superseded a number of the long-established forms of cash which had bounced around the tills of European countries since time immemorial, replacing them with a financial uniformity – and a lot of notes whose defining image is generally a triumphal arch or a stained-glass window.
You probably feel one of four ways about this:
A) Largely uninterested – whatever the result of the Brexit political impasse, the Euro does not apply to Britain.
B) Mildly approving – the Euro has made the process of going on holiday to the continent a little simpler. Whether you are visiting Spain, France, Germany, Portugal or Italy, you know you can use the exact same currency. One less thing to worry about.
C) Definitely disgruntled – arguing that the Euro has had a flattening effect on economies across the continent.
Or D) Mildly nostalgic. Just as the rise of the Schengen Area means we no longer collect passport stamps as we used to (although who knows what the situation will be post-Brexit), so the European travel experience has, perhaps, shed a little of its romance for the loss of all those domestic monies, with their curiously shaped coins, myriad designs, and random faces of heads of state you had otherwise never heard of.
Of course, dead currencies are a strange thing to be nostalgic about – not least here in 2019, as we speed ever faster towards the apparent nirvana of a cashless society. Will readers of this publication in 20 years time, sipping coffees purchased using whatever style of transaction (holograms? retina scans? the return of the groat?) has surged past Apple Pay into economic ubiquity, look back at the Euro with rose-tinted glances? Indeed, will the single currency still exist? And who might be using it?
All questions for the future. But for now, let’s ask a few questions about the past. How much do you remember about the European currencies of yesteryear? Answers on the back of postcard, bearing a 10-centime stamp, posted on a Sealink ferry. Or, better still, via the modern magic of the click-boxes below. That way, you’ll know your score…
