INDEED, A PERFECT SYMBOL:

"What the notes look like is important. The euro is a tangible symbol of Europe," Hans de Heij, project manager in the cash policy division of Dutch central bank DNB, told Deutsche Welle.

 

In contrast to the beloved Dutch sunflower on the former 50 guilder note, public response to the euro is "emotionally flat," said de Heij, explaining that people have a hard time identifying with composites of old structures that represent different styles, but no real European architecture.

 

Dutch market researchers TNS Nipo found that 82 percent of respondents could not even recall any theme at all on the euro notes and only one percent were able to identify the era of the portals on the face of the 50-euro bill as Renaissance. On the five-euro note, barely two percent recognized the style of the generic gate as Classical. On the reverse side of the bills, there is a borderless map of Europe and bridges representing various epochs from classical antiquity to the modern age. [...]

Heiner Treinen, a German sociologist and member of the advisory group on the selection of design themes, said that national pride got in the way of consensus, not unlike the infighting among member states over the future of the common currency now.

"There were too many nations with very nationalistic feelings about their country's symbols," said Treinen, who had represented Germany among an EU which then consisted of 15 member states.

 

"As nations cede more and more of their sovereignty to Brussels, people have a tendency to cling even more ferociously to their own distinctiveness," he added.

 

The upshot of such disunity was that when a design competition for the euro was launched in 1996, the images on the banknotes were not allowed to reflect any national bias, period. [...]

 

Robert Ballagh, a Dublin artist who was selected to submit designs on behalf of Ireland for the competition, said that the "eurocrats who devised rules that were supposed to offend no one," wound up encouraging designs that were watered down to the lowest common denominator.

 

"The euro is a cultural disaster," commented Ballagh. "We've ended up with the dullest banknotes in the history of currency, designed by a committee."

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