Jingle the euro coins in your pocket when you’re in the Netherlands and they will all sound the same. But if you take a closer look, you’ll notice that Queen Beatrix may not even be among the heads or symbols on the back of those coins. Only a quarter of all euro coins in circulation in the Netherlands are actually Dutch.

By Jacqueline Nolan

After ten years in use - starting life with hopes for European unity and stable prices and now the symbol of the deepening European debt crisis – the one thing the euro has done with absolute certainty is cross EU borders with ease.

‘Eurometer’
That’s the conclusion reached by eurodiffusie.nl, a body set up by a group of mathematicians to record the flow of the newly-launched coin after 1 January 2002. Each month the experts have recorded the contents of numerous Dutch wallets and purses. 

Even at the time of the euro’s launch, foreign euro coins already made up eight percent of those in circulation in the Netherland. At the end of its first year, some 22 percent of the euros in Dutch pockets originated from other EU nations. 

Frederik Jan Jungen now manages eurodiffusie.nl on his own. A loyal group of between 200 and 300 people, known as the “eurometers”, still supply him with their ‘euro data each month. 

Eagle in your purse
When you delve into a Dutch  wallet, it’s likely that there will be just as many euro coins with an eagle on the reverse site  as there are ones with the Dutch queen – one quarter of all the coins come from Germany.

Yet another  quarter come from Belgium and France together – with the image of  King Albert II of the Belgians competing with the French tree of life  - designed by Joaquim Jimenez and symbolising life, continuity and growth – for space in your purse. The final 25 percent  come from the other 13 euro countries. 

No Maltese
But it’s more likely you’ll come across the Irish Celtic harp – based on the ancient harp belonging to the ancient king of Ireland Brian Boru – or Spain’s King Juan Carlos I, rather than Slovakia’s double cross on three hills. While foreign euro coins are more the rule than the exception in the Netherlands, the chances of handling a Maltese, Slovenian or Slovakian euro are almost negligible. 

That also holds for euro coins from Estonia. In December, only 0.3 percent of euro coins recorded in the Netherlands came from this  Baltic State.

Euro: higher prices
But for all the symbols of trees, eagles and harps, the currency has left crisis-rattled consumers decidedly ambivalent a decade on from its launch, reports news agency AFA.

On the streets of Berlin, Madrid and Bratislava the view is similar: despite its clear upsides, the transition to the euro has hiked the cost of living along with  introducing deep political and economic uncertainty in the bloc.

The euro, the most tangible manifestation of European integration in everyday life, has become a symbol of the current economic downturn.

And as more and more Dutch begin to pine for the guilder, the question arises whether we we’ll have euro coins in our purses and wallets at all in the near future?

(jn/tt/tpf)

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