Eleven years after Robert Kalina's 2002 original euro banknotes entered circulation, the European Central Bank issued a refreshed series with upgraded security features and a slightly modified design. The aesthetics of European architecture survived intact, with the same colour-coded ages from classical to modern. The difference is in the watermark and the hologram window: both now carry the face of Europa, the Phoenician princess of Greek myth who Zeus carried off to Crete in the form of a bull and after whom the continent is named. The series takes its informal name from her.
The refresh was designed by Reinhold Gerstetter, an independent Berlin-based banknote designer who had also worked on the German mark, Spanish peseta and Israeli shekel. Gerstetter kept Kalina's age-of-architecture conceit and the European-flag colour palette, but redrew the windows, gateways and bridges with the security elements of the 2010s in mind: an emerald number that shifts colour on tilt, a portrait window in the holographic stripe, and a printing relief that can be felt under the fingertip.
The Europa series rolled out one denomination at a time over six years, beginning with the 5 € on 2 May 2013 and finishing with the 100 € and 200 € on 28 May 2019. The 500 € was never refreshed.
Europa, the Phoenician princess
The choice of Europa for the watermark and hologram was made by the ECB's banknote committee in 2009 and announced as part of the new design's brief to Gerstetter. The image used on the notes is taken from a Greek red-figure vase made in Tarentum in southern Italy around 350 BC, now in the Louvre, which shows the princess being carried across the sea on the back of the white bull. The face on the notes is rendered in line engraving from that ceramic original.
The Europa myth has nothing to do with the European Union institutionally; the ECB chose her because she names the continent and predates every modern political division of it. She is visible in two places on every Europa-series note. The first is the portrait window in the holographic stripe on the right of the obverse: hold the note up to the light and a small face turns towards you. The second is the watermark on the white margin: against transmitted light the same face appears as a graded ink-density print, the denomination beside her.
Rollout
The series entered circulation one denomination at a time, each unveiled at the Frankfurt headquarters of the ECB a few months before issue:
- 2 May 2013: 5 €
- 23 September 2014: 10 €
- 25 November 2015: 20 €
- 4 April 2017: 50 €
- 28 May 2019: 100 € and 200 € (jointly)
The 500 € was not part of the rollout. The original 2002 Kalina notes remain legal tender across the eurozone and circulate alongside the Europa series; only the 5 € is now substantially Europa-only, the older Kalina 5s having attrited out of cash registers over a decade.
The 500 € that wasn't renewed
The ECB stopped issuing the 500 € in March 2019, two months before the Europa series 100 and 200 entered circulation. The note had been the largest single denomination of any major Western currency in regular issue; it was also disproportionately the cash form preferred by money launderers. One million euros in 500-euro notes weighs 2.2 kilograms and fits in a laptop bag, against twenty kilograms and a suitcase for the same value in 50s. At peak, 500-euro notes were about 30 per cent of all euros in cash circulation by value, despite ordinary households almost never seeing one.
The withdrawal was politically driven. The ECB's review, ordered after lobbying from European parliamentarians and the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), concluded that the note's role in serious crime outweighed its convenience for legitimate cash transactions. The 500 € remains legal tender. National central banks across the eurozone will continue to exchange them indefinitely; printing has stopped.
The 200 €, refreshed in 2019, was redesigned to take some of the high-denomination weight: it has the most prominent of the Europa security features and is the largest note still in active issue.