New-look euro coins meet demands

Date: 23/07/1998

By Tim Jones

THE European Commission will give the go-ahead for the minting of 60 billion euro coins next week after months of fierce negotiations with pressure groups over their design.

The latest plan, which is due to be approved by the full Commission next Wednesday (29 July), will include alterations to two of the eight single currency coins in response to complaints from vending machine-makers and from blind and partially sighted people.

In his new draft regulation, Economics Commissioner Yves-Thibault de Silguy will tighten up the wording on how rough the serrated edges, or 'milling', of the ten-cent coin should be. The original legal text stressed that the milling should be "coarse", which was reflected in the prototype pieces EU mint directors coined for a meeting of interest groups organised by the Commission last year.

But since then, the first set of ten-cent coins produced by the French mint turned out to have a smoother and less distinct milling, much to the annoyance of the European Blind Union (EBU).

As a result, the French mint has been forced to melt down 9 million ten-cent coins and will have to remake them to the new specifications.

Ironically, changes agreed last year to the design of the 20-cent coin to accommodate the wishes of the EBU have also returned to haunt the Commission.

To make this coin distinct, the Commission and mint directors came up with the so-called 'Spanish flower' design, which is round but marked with five deep nicks in the side to resemble the shape of a flower.

But the companies which produce and profit from vending machines such as slot machines, parking metres and chocolate bar vendors insisted that making the 20-cent coin the same size as the 50-cent piece, albeit with the five nicks, was an invitation to fraud.

The European Vending Association called for an increase in the weight of the 50-cent coin to overcome this problem.

It pointed out that vending machines could only read the diameter and thickness of coins, as well as recognising what metal they were made of through their ability to conduct electrical currents, and would not be able to detect the nicks in the 20-cent piece. Since the metal in the 20-cent and 50-cent piece was identical, warned the association, the chances of people systematically using the 20 as a 50 were high.

The proposal to be approved by the Commission next week will call for more pronounced milling on the 50-cent piece to make it easier for blind people to identify it by touch.

The design specifications of the remaining one, two and five-cent coins as well as the one and two-euro pieces will remain unchanged.