Twenty years after the introduction of the single currency, one thing is clear: euro banknotes have not reached the symbol status enjoyed by dollars. The fault of their mediocre aesthetics, the result of compromise between the Member States, regrets The paper.
The first to honor the euro in the United States was Jay-Z. In the middle of the clip of Blue Magic, between Bentley convertibles and references to the 1980s, suddenly appears a wad of 500 euro notes. Then a full suitcase. We are then in autumn 2007 and at the time, the European currency was not yet taken seriously, even if, recently, its value had exceeded that of the dollar. The clip alerted America and sounded the end of the long hegemony of the greenback celebrated even in Disney. “Jay-Z insults the dollar” shouted the press.
Still, twenty years later, the American currency remains an aesthetic symbol. And the same cannot be said of the European. Because despite recent makeovers, the euros used today by nearly 350 million people remain tasteless. They reflect the stereotypical image – the image distorted by the populists, even – that we have of the European institutions. Buildings full of bureaucrats, beautiful unachievable ideals, cold diktats from northern Europe who dare to ban Sardinian cheese with larvae.
“A preventive form of ‘political correctness’”
The reason for this image is simple: the euro was designed not to upset anyone. If we wanted to use contemporary language, we could say that the banknote design process was subject to a preventive form of “political correctness”. To a prophylactic cowardice, aiming not to open small cracks in the solid Union. Because at a time when the 12 Member States were abandoning their old currencies, the last thing we wanted to do was to upset the delicate national balances, to bring water to the mill of the Europhobic movements.
Already in 1994, the European Monetary Institute, which will become the European Central Bank in 1998, formed a team of 15 experts. Almost all of them were people appointed by the national banks, to choose what to put on the
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Giulio Silvano
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Founded in 1996 by Giuliano Ferrara, a former spokesman for the Berlusconi government, and led by a team of Conservatives, The paper wants to be the daily life of l’intelligentsia of the Italian right. The newspaper, whose headquarters
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