Designers take note

Date: 27/02/1997

Is it back to the drawing board for the poor old euro-note?

First came all the furore over those pictures of bridges, which critics claim are clearly identifiable as real bridges (mostly in France, as it happens) and not the non-specific representations that everyone was promised.

Now Spanish Christian Democrat MEP Fernando Fernández Martín has raised the plight of the residents of the Canary Islands, who were completely left off the map of the EU which forms the backdrop to all the notes. In a question to Economics Commissioner Yves-Thibault de Silguy, Martín warned that the archipelago was “politically, socially and culturally sensitive to such matters” and asked what the Commission was going to do about it.

Don't blame me, blame the European Monetary Institute, said De Silguy in his written answer - or words to that effect.

Besides, said the Commissioner, the map was supposed to be an “artistic expression” of Europe, not every little nook and cranny. However, the EMI will include the missing islands “in as far as it is technically possible” when they prepare for the print tests.