• Design
• Substrate
• Printing
• Features
• Value
• Disposal
• Epilogue

Noteworthy Design

Things to know about the new 10 euro bill

Chapter 1

a european Identity

When creating a banknote the designers must find a fine balance between the inclusion of a variety of security features and an aesthetically pleasing appearance. The design process behind our current Euro-Bills began in early 1994, when the European Monetary Institute put together the “Theme Selection Advisory Group”, consisting of experts of various fields, who would all contribute to mastering the various specifications of the forthcoming European currency. After four years of hard work and countless alterations, the finished design was announced and presented to the world in July of 1997. Let's take a look at what types of currencies there are:

Even in todays digital world, having a physical currency is extremely important. People have always had and will always have the need to hold something in their hands, to feel and own. The design process behind our current Euro-Bills began in early 1994, when the European Monetary Institute put together the “Theme Selection Advisory Group”, consisting of experts of various fields, which would all contribute to mastering the various specifications of the forthcoming european currency.

While Robert Kalina was chosen as the executive designer for the first euro series in 1994, the European Central Bank decided to charge another designer with the redesign of the second series in 2010. The task of creating the new design was assigned to Reinhold Gerstetter, a banknote designer with experience from working on the last series of the German Mark. This new design had to keep the look and feel of the old 10 euro bill, but adopt the improved security features, and though technically only being a re-design still marks the first step in creating the brand new banknote.

Chapter 2

Creating The Substrate

The physical material upon which the banknote is printed - the substrate - must satisfy a number of requirements. It must be robust in handling, exhibit excellent print performance, provide an appropriate platform for security features and must be difficult to counterfeit. This means it should withstand human handling under adverse conditions like sweating, laundering or folding, as well as displaying tear-resistance and immunity to environmental influences like dirt, heat or moisture. Because of the embedded security features and their familiar intaglio print, cotton banknotes have a unique feel that effectively serves to prevent counterfeits from being accepted. Additionally, the recognizable intaglio haptic must provide exceptional endurance.

Having gone through these treatments, only 5% of the original 95% water are left, and the substrate rolls already contain three security features: the special chemical composition, the watermark and the silver thread.

The last step in the production of the banknote substrate consists in cutting the resulting material rolls into a form that is suitable for printing. Euro banknote sheets are packed into reams of 500 leaves in a size specified by the banknote printer. Each sheet is large enough to provide space for printing from 24 to 60 banknotes. Since the paper mass has a weight of 85 gr/m², a ream weights between 10 and 20 kg. The end product of substrate manufacture is the delivery of the reams to the banknote printing work.

Chapter 3

The Printing Process

In order to meet the initial demand for Euro banknotes, the European Currency Institute decided to use a Pooling Method. This means that no single National Central Bank is responsible for all denominations, as a system of separate production would be inefficient and lead to large quality discrepancies. Instead, each National Central Bank contracts to produce only a limited number of denominations, spread out among 15 different public and private printing works; the initial letter in the six-character printing code on every banknote identifies the printer of the banknote. There are thus some 70 different combinations of the NCB/Printer/Denomination triplet. In the intial phase of the Euro introduction in 2001 the necessary production capacity was 1,000,000,000 banknotes per month, i.e. 33 million per day, 1400000 per hour, 23000 per minute, or approximately 400 per second. These are the printing locations for the Euro bills:

Chapter 4

Exploring the Bill

The demands on modern banknotes are becoming constantly more stringent. Driven by the need to stay a step ahead of sophisticated counterfeiters, new high-tech printing and security features are constantly being created. In a new series project, banknote designers are challenged to find a balance between an appealing overall appearance and the inclusion of a variety of new security features - visual, tactile, material and chemical.
Due to the ready availability in recent decades of inexpensive, high quality image reproduction equipment, the central banks and the banknote designers have been engaged in a technological arms race to thwart sophisticated counterfeiting operations. Explore the new state of the art features included in the new 10 euro bill:

The Security Features

Discover the various included security features

Front View

The Emerald Number

When tilting the banknote, the shiny number in the bottom left corner of the note displays an effect of the light that moves up and down. The number also changes colour from emerald green to deep blue.

The Watermark

The watermark is produced by the varying thickness of the paper. A faint image becomes visible and shows a portrait of Europa (a figure from Greek mythology), the value of the banknote and a window appears when you hold the banknote against the light.

The Hologram

The hologram – the silvery stripe on the right of the banknote – reveals a portrait of Europa as well as the Euro symbol, a window and the numeral 10.

The Eurion-Constellation

A special arrangement of circles can be found on the bill. Position, size and color are checked not only by ATM machines, but also by printers and copiers to prevent scanning or reproduction.

The Silver Thread

The silver security thread is embedded in the new banknote. The security thread appears as a dark stripe when you hold the banknote against the light. The Euro symbol and the numeral 10 can be seen in tiny white lettering in that stripe.

The Printcode

Each banknote contains a 6-symbol printcode, which identifies the originally used printing plate from which it was produced.

The Reliefprint

Created by the relief print, the raised lines make it easy to identify the banknote, especially for visually handicapped people. Parts of the main image, the lettering and the large value numeral on the front of the banknote also feel thicker.

The Microprint

Some areas of the banknote feature a series of tiny letters: you will need a magnifying glass to see it. Although tiny in size, the microprinting is still sharp, and not blurred, an impressive printing feat.

Back View

The Microprint

As on the front, the back has several areas covered with letters and numbers in micro print.

The Eurion-Constellation

Another arrangement of eurion-circles can be found on back, creating redundancy for the security feature.

The Banknote-Code

The probably best known security feature: the first character of the serial number is a letter which uniquely identifies the printer. The remaining 11 characters which, when their digital root is calculated, give a particular checksum.

These state of the art security features make counterfeiting an extremely difficult task. Yet this alone does not explain why everyone values these printed on pieces of cotton so much.

So where does this perception of value come from?

Chapter 5

The Magic of Value

When truckloads of bundled banknotes leave the printing press they are transported in armored police vehicles or private cash-in-transit carriers to government banknote warehouses. There they undergo administrative in-processing, at the conclusion of which the banknotes cease to be simply colorfully printed substrates, and legally assume the status of money, waiting to be requisitioned by large commercial banks and injected into circulation via ATM machines or over-the-counter transactions. A modern banknote is a piece of sophisticated printing technology whose face value far exceeds its material worth.

Technically the printing of banknotes does not represent the creation of fresh money. Instead, the commercial banks, which are responsible for bringing cash into public circulation, simply debit their standing reserve accounts at the central bank in exchange for the delivery of cash. By the same token, a commercial bank may sometimes determine it has more cash on hand than needed. In this case it will remit excess banknotes to the central bank, and its reserve account will be credited with the balance.

But why are citizens willing to accept their national currency as a medium of exchange and a long-term repository of value? And why is a banknote with a material value of 7 cents treated as if it were worth much more?

Money is a medium of exchange, a unit of account and a store of value. It can be considered a means to convert human labor into a form that can be stored indefinitely, transported readily, and transferred easily to another person in exchange for goods or services. Subjectively for each individual, it acquired value because it represented the use value of human energy applied in productive work and the goods and services produced by that work. Money became a symbol to represent the value of work, the things it produced, the property on which it was produced and into which surplus production may be converted.

In the final analysis the value of the banknote consists in the capital of trust that the citizenry places in its government. It represents the citizenry's assessment of its government's ability to enforce the wide-scale acceptance of the banknote as "legal tender for all debts, public and private" (the phrase appears on the US Dollar) as a medium of exchange, and the government's' willingness to exercise restraint in the creation of new money as well as its ability to defend the sovereign monopoly in the reproduction of banknotes, that is, its ability to prevent counterfeiting. The first point means that within its jurisdiction the government will enforce the acceptance of the currency as a medium of exchange; the second that the government will exercise restraint in the distribution and circulation of cash, and will execute measures to prevent counterfeiting. This latter point can be summarized as saying: the government claims to guarantee that it will enforce an objective relation between the nation's real economic capacity and the amount of currency in circulation.

Chapter 6

Ending the Cycle

Banknotes that are remitted from merchants to a central bank processing center are automatically investigated on special sorting machines that check their quality and authenticity. Genuine notes of good quality are returned to circulation, poor quality genuine notes are destroyed.

Epilogue

What lies ahead?

To stay one step ahead of the counterfeiters the ECBEuropean Central Bank constantly monitors the counterfeit frequency identified by its banknote processing machinery, as well as the state of the art in printing and reproduction technology. It also participates in the specification of new printing methods and the development of new security features.

A security feature begins to "age" as soon as the banknote series is issued. Naturally the knowledge of the counterfeiters improves with time. Consequently, the ECBEuropean Central Bank must issue a new series of redesigned banknotes when the current series has been in circulation for a few years.

The initial Euro series, the ES1, began to come into circulation at the beginning of 2002. The initial denomination of the new ES2 Euro series, the 5 Euro note, was introduced eleven years later in May, 2013. The new ES2 Europa Series 10 Euro note will come into circulation in September, 2014. The remaining denominations will be gradually introduced in subsequent years.

Aside from counterfeiters, the banknote has other adversaries, as well. The credit card industry would like to replace cash by cards. And many governments, unhappy with the anonymity of banknotes, would prefer that its citizens performed their financial transactions with methods of payment that are easier to monitor and control.

Nonetheless, the worldwide volume of banknotes in circulation increases by 3% yearly. Thus it would be no surprise to see the next Euro series, the ES3, come into circulation by the middle of the next decade...