Design elements

Source: The European Central Bank

On the front of both series of euro banknotes, windows and doorways are shown. They symbolise the European spirit of openness and cooperation. The bridges on the back symbolise communication between the people of Europe and between Europe and the rest of the world.

More information about the BRIDGES ON EURO BANKNOTES you can find here …

Other design elements are:

• the name of the currency – euro – in both the Latin (EURO) and the Greek (EYPΩ) alphabets for the first series; the Europa series has the name also in the Cyrillic alphabet (EBPO);
• Initials of the European Central Bank in five linguistic variants – BCE, ECB, EZB, EKT and EKP for the first series andin nine linguistic variants for the second series:
  • BCE: French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish
  • ECB: Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Latvian, Lithuanian, Slovak, Slovene, Swedish
  • ЕЦБ: Bulgarian
  • EZB: German
  • EKP: Estonian, Finnish
  • EKT: Greek
  • EKB: Hungarian
  • BĊE: Maltese
  • EBC: Polish
• the symbol © indicating copyright protection; and
• the EU flag.

Signatures

Each banknote bears the signature of either Willem F. Duisenberg, Jean-Claude Trichet or Mario Draghi – the first, second and third Presidents of the European Central Bank respectively. These banknotes are all equally valid.

Willem F. Duisenberg	Jean-Claude Trichet	Mario Draghi

 

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Map of Europe

The banknotes show a geographical representation of Europe. It excludes islands of less than 400 square kilometres because high-volume offset printing does not permit the accurate reproduction of small design elements. The Europa series has a revised map of Europe, including Malta and Cyprus.

The tiny boxes near the bottom of the banknote show the Canary Islands and some overseas territories of France where the euro is also used.

Country codes on the first series of banknotes

The central bank that commissioned the printing of a banknote (but not necessarily the country of printing) is indicated by a letter or country code preceding the serial number, as shown here:

This particular banknote, bearing the letter ‘S’, was printed for the Banca d’Italia. The country codes are listed below.

Serial numbers on the Europa series of banknotes

The serial numbers on this series are the two numbers printed on the back of the banknote: a horizontal number printed in black and a vertical number printed in a different colour.

The horizontal number comprises two letters and ten digits. The first letter identifies the printing works – see the list below. The second letter has no particular meaning; it simply makes more serial numbers possible.