The history of the Euro

Today I am going to write about the history of the Euro and how it has changed along the way.

The euro was first introduced in 1999 but was only actually used for electronic payments until 2002 when 12 countries in the EU abandoned their currencies and all started using euros.

Imagine well over three million people from various countries all trying to change there money to one currency? This was ranked the worlds largest civilian project in the history of the world!

At one point there was an era called the transition period were you were able to spend your own currency and the euro at the same time. This came to an end in 2002 when the euro was officially entered into circulation.

Since then many different countries have joined the eurozone including Australia, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, The Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain.

There are seven different euro notes each one a different size, colour, and face value: €5 (grey), €10 (red), €20 (blue), €50 (orange), €100 (green), €200 (yellow), and €500 (purple).

There are also eight different coins: €0.01, €0.02, €0.05, €0.10, €0.20, €0.50, €1, and €2.
Each countries euro has the same thing on one side but on the other side is usually some kind of mint to match the country and/or the countries history.

The Euro sign is € most people describe it as a capitol C with an = in the middle of it.

The Euro sign in its original colours