Finance History | Eurotower, 1 January 2002 — One Currency Arrived Through Every Cash Machine at Once
· 2002-1
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Finance History | Eurotower, 1 January 2002 — One Currency Arrived Through Every Cash Machine at Once
kevin
At midnight on 1 January 2002, euro notes and coins entered circulation in twelve countries serving 308 million people.
The currency itself was already three years old. Exchange rates had been fixed and electronic accounts converted on 1 January 1999, but households still paid with national notes and coins until the cash changeover made the shared unit tangible.
The mechanism was logistical as much as monetary. From September 2001, central banks frontloaded euro cash to banks and banks passed it to retailers, so tills and automated teller machines could switch without waiting for old money to return.
By the launch date, 14.89 billion euro banknotes with a face value of about €633 billion in 2002 euros had been produced for the initial supply. Member states minted the coins, while the European Central Bank coordinated banknote production and common quality controls.
The advance distribution worked. By 3 January 2002, 96 percent of cash dispensers in the euro area were issuing euro notes, and after one week more than half of cash transactions used the new currency.
Dual circulation lasted no more than two months in the participating countries. On 1 March 2002 the euro became the area’s sole legal tender, after more than 6 billion national banknotes and nearly 30 billion national coins had been withdrawn.
Frankfurt’s Eurotower was the European Central Bank’s headquarters during the changeover. The institution later moved its main offices east to the former wholesale-market site, but Kaiserstrasse 29 remains an ECB premises and the euro sculpture still turns the technical operation into a street-level landmark.
This pin cannot represent twelve national changeovers by itself. It marks the coordinating centre where a currency that already existed in law and databases was prepared to survive the physical test of cash drawers, vending machines, and millions of ordinary transactions.
Photo: Tilman AB, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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