h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"At midnight on 28 February, 2002, the national currencies of Belgium, Greece, Spain, Italy, Luxembourg, Austria, Portugal and Finland ceased to be legal tender. "

Same in Germany BTW.

Amyway. The discussion in the other threads is (ATM) very UK centred, which is ok as that's how the questions were phrased.

I can say that I'm living quite happily with the new currency. And, IMO, the economic difficulties mentioned in the other threads would be there no matter what the currency.

They could have put away with the 1 and 2 c Coins (as in Australia) and the coins take about a month to get used to. But, hey, it seves the trouble of getting used to currencies in the places you go for a weekend. Nothing to get worked up about.

Ah, and a word about that site referenced (http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1845000/1845064.stm)

Interestingly enough I remember to have read differnt.

And.... a poll of "just over 1,000 people" .... C'mon! Out of 80,000,000? Is that s'posed to be representative?!

I was born in New Zealand and grew up there and in Australia. I have spent two years living in London and am now living in France (since before the Euro).

What I found absolutely amazing is that, while many other countries are phasing out/have phased out 1 & 2 pence/cent pieces, an entire new currency has just been created including these annoying things. As usual, they are worth very little and are difficult to get rid of but, what makes matters even worse, is that they are even smaller than those of any of the currencies I have previously lived with.

On the other hand, maybe it is a European Union social program to improve the finances of beggars and buskers, who I am fairly certain get a LOT of small gold Euro coins these days!

Yeah, as an Aussie I wondered how the 1c and 2c coins would work - I only just remember them here in Australia, but I do remember having a pocketful of them and all of them only adding up to 50c or a dollar.

Europa: The European Union

F19585?thread=98809?thread=

A558966

I should have read this first before I wrote my Finland Finland thread.
We don't have the little coins here.

The small coins were, as far as I gatter, introduced for the countries with the weakeer economies, like spain or greece. They already had(in spain)one pesseata coins and they were worth absolutely noting. But this means that the one cent coins are worth something in those countries.
And why not, if you think about it two cent is worth about 0.85 belgian francs(just as an example)and one franc pieces were widely used in Belgium. Small diffence I'd say

Rod

Fair point. But it's kind of odd, nonetheless, that the Finnish Mark was about the same as the French Franc and the two countries have different ideas on which coins are worthless.