🇪🇺Euro (EUR)

The euro came into existence on 1 January 1999 as an accounting currency, with the exchange rates of the participating national currencies fixed irrevocably on that day. Notes and coins arrived three years later, on 1 January 2002, when the German mark, the French franc, the Italian lira, the Spanish peseta and the other legacy currencies were withdrawn. Every euro coin has a common European side and a national side, and all of them are valid in every country of the zone.

One central bank now sets a single interest rate for economies as different as Germany's and Greece's, which is the standing tension of the project and the reason euro rates move on European Central Bank meetings and on euro area inflation data. The euro is also an anchor beyond its own borders: the West African and Central African CFA francs, the Comorian franc and the Cape Verdean escudo are all pegged to it.

The euro is the currency of the euro area — Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Ireland, Portugal, Greece, Finland and the other EU countries that have adopted it — and it is also used by agreement in Monaco, San Marino, Andorra and Vatican City, and unilaterally in Kosovo and Montenegro.