Squabbling delays design of euro coin

Date: 01/05/1997

By Tim Jones

DIFFERENCES over the effect of nickel on health and pressure from vending-machine manufacturers are delaying a decision on designs for the eight single currency coins.

EU finance ministers were originally due to settle the issue at their next meeting on 12 May, but the choice of design for the euro and cent coins will not now be made until 9 June - one week before Union leaders meet at the Amsterdam summit.

Ever since the euro banknotes were selected in December, the Swedish authorities have been holding up a decision on the small change because of their opposition to the use of nickel in the coins. They argue that the metal causes allergic reactions and have been phasing out its use in their coins over the past six years.

But the European Commission, which is responsible for supervising coin design, believes the Swedes have overstated their case. Only the one and two-euro coins will have a nickel tan, say officials, and using nickel will allow for some of the 300,000 tonnes of metal required to mint the coins to be recycled from existing pieces.

At the same time, a plan to make the 20-cent coin nine-sided has run into implacable opposition from the Union's vending-machine manufacturers, supported by the German government.

The polygonal coin was designed to make life easier for the blind and visually-impaired, but machine manufacturers claim it would make their job more difficult and have put pressure on countries which do not already have polygonal coins not to adopt them.

In a bid to settle these disputes as quickly as possible, a special working party chaired by the Commission was set up by mint directors to haggle over the remaining issues. But it has yet to come up with a compromise which will satisfy all sides, thus forcing a delay.

The competition to choose which picture will go on to one side of the one, two, five, ten, 20 and 50-cent coins and the one and two-euro pieces has gone smoothly until now.

In January, ministers selected a jury of coin experts, historians, artists, and psychologists to choose a short list of designs from the 42 on offer. By the end of February, each member state had sent three designs to the Commission, which were then placed with a Brussels notary. Each design was assigned a code by the notary to avoid accusations of favouritism towards any one nationality.

The jury scrutinised the artwork in mid-March and came up with a short list of nine designs. Then an EU-wide poll was conducted by Ipsos-Gallup to test the jury's choice on a wider public.

Unlike the banknotes, on which only one-fifth of the available space has been allocated to national symbols, one entire side of the new coins will be left free for monarchist nations to show their kings and queens, and for other countries to display symbols of national pride.