Europa Series Design
The design of the Europa series is based on the “ages and styles” theme of the first series. However, the new banknotes have been visually modified in order to give them a fresh look and to accommodate a range of new and enhanced security features, which will also make it easy to differentiate between the two series.
As in the first series, the new Europa series banknotes will show architectural styles from seven periods in Europe’s cultural history, but do not show any existing monuments or bridges. The styles are as follows:
€5: Classical
€10: Romanesque
€20: Gothic
€50: Renaissance
€100: Baroque and rococo
€200: 19th century iron and glass architecture
€500: 20th century architecture
An independent banknote designer based in Berlin, Reinhold Gerstetter, was selected to refresh the design of the euro banknotes.
Dominant colours will be used for each note and they will contrast with the “adjacent” notes in respect of their value. Each banknote denomination in the second series will have the same colour as in the first series, i.e. grey for €5, red for €10, blue for €20, orange for €50, green for €100, yellow-brown for €200 and purple for €500.
The new banknotes also take into account the countries which have joined the European Union since the launch of the first series. They show:
- the name of the currency, euro, not only in the Latin (EURO) and Greek (EYPΩ) alphabets but also in the Cyrillic (EBPO) alphabet, as a result of Bulgaria joining the European Union in 2007;
- a revised map of Europe, including Malta and Cyprus; and
- the initials of the European Central Bank in nine linguistic variants corresponding to the following languages:
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