Slovenia to use "borrowed" euro notes first

[tabbs]

As you may know, Slovenia is about to join the European currency union, most probably on 1 January. According to an article that the Austrian newspaper Die Presse published online today, Slovenia will at the first stage simply use the existing euro notes ("die Scheine will es sich zunächst aus dem Euroraum leihen"). Thus no "Slovenian" notes - but apart from a couple of paper money aficionados hardly anybody will care about that, I assume.

 

Another interesting aspect mentioned in the article is this: "Erst nach der für 2008 geplanten, EU-weiten Modifizierung der Euroscheine wird Slowenien die Banknoten selber drucken." Which means that after the EU-wide modification of the euro notes planned for 2008 Slovenia will start printing euro notes ...

 

Source (in German):

http://www.diepresse.com/Artikel.aspx?chan...rt=eu&id=552214

(words in bold above emphasized by yours truly)

 

Don't know much about this "modification". So far I have only read fairly vague information about extra security features - but no details yet.

 

Christian

[henare]

wow. is the slovenian economy that small that it can just be sucked up into the euro zone without additional notes and coins?

[tabbs]

From a technical point of view, Slovenia can simply use the existing euro cash indeed. Whether there are 306 million people in "Euroland" (nowadays) or 308 million (with Slovenia) does not make a big difference. And since the euro paper money does not have any country specific characteristics (apart from a letter in the serial number), people hardly notice the difference between notes ordered by the central bank of A or B anyway.

 

With the coins it is a somewhat different story - as you know, the circulation coins have one country specific side. And Slovenia will of course not miss the opportunity to issue "Slovenian flavored" coins. See http://www.coinpeople.com/Slovenia-Euro-Sc...6-07-t8372.html for more info, and have a look at page 15 of the changeover schedule to view the coin designs. Those actually look neat - but since this is the banknote area, I did not want to go into coin details here.

 

Christian

[SlavicScott]

wow.  is the slovenian economy that small that it can just be sucked up into the euro zone without additional notes and coins?

 

 

According to the CIA World Factbook, Slovenia has an area of just over 20,000km² (slightly smaller than New Jersey), and a population of just over 2 million (¼ of that is metropolitan Ljubljana, the capital). In relationship to the whole of the Euro zone membership, yes, it can be "sucked up".

 

One other interesting note from the World Factbook.... population 2.01 million people, 1.70 million cell-phones.