On 4 August 1995, Pirlot sent a letter to then President of the European Commission, Jacques Santer, in which he suggested the name euro to be used for the planned currency of the EU. Later, Pirlot received an official letter thanking him for the suggestion.[2]
The name euro was officially adopted by the European Council in Madrid (Spain) on 16 December 1995.[3]Jean-Jacques Schul, chairman of Promeuro (Association for the promotion of the euro), claims that to his knowledge nobody else had suggested to use this name for the currency before 4 August 1995.
Another suggestion made by Pirlot in the same letter, to name the hundredth of the currency "ropas", has not been realized – instead, the name "cent" has been adopted.[citation needed]
The euro is the official currency of 20 of the 27 member states of the European Union. This group of states is officially known as the euro area or, commonly, the eurozone, and includes about 344 million citizens as of 2023. The euro is divided into 100 euro cents.
The flag of Europe or European flag consists of twelve golden stars forming a circle on a blue field. It was designed and adopted in 1955 by the Council of Europe (CoE) as a symbol for the whole of Europe.
The European Currency Unit was a unit of account used by the European Economic Community and composed of a basket of member country currencies. The ECU came in to operation on 13 March 1979 and was assigned the ISO 4217 code. The ECU replaced the European Unit of Account (EUA) at parity in 1979, and it was later replaced by the euro (EUR) at parity on 1 January 1999.
The Treaty on European Union, commonly known as the Maastricht Treaty, is the foundation treaty of the European Union (EU). Concluded in 1992 between the then-twelve member states of the European Communities, it announced "a new stage in the process of European integration" chiefly in provisions for a shared European citizenship, for the eventual introduction of a single currency, and for common foreign and security policies. Although these were widely seen to presage a "federal Europe", the focus of constitutional debate shifted to the later 2007 Treaty of Lisbon. In the wake of the Eurozone debt crisis unfolding from 2009, the most enduring reference to the Maastricht Treaty has been to the rules of compliance – the "Maastricht criteria" – for the currency union.
The euro area, commonly called the eurozone (EZ), is a currency union of 20 member states of the European Union (EU) that have adopted the euro (€) as their primary currency and sole legal tender, and have thus fully implemented EMU policies.
The Santer Commission was the European Commission in office between 23 January 1995 and 15 March 1999. The administration was led by Jacques Santer.
Several linguistic issues have arisen in relation to the spelling of the words euro and cent in the many languages of the member states of the European Union, as well as in relation to grammar and the formation of plurals.
The euro sign ⟨€⟩ is the currency sign used for the euro, the official currency of the eurozone and adopted, although not required to, by Kosovo and Montenegro. The design was presented to the public by the European Commission on 12 December 1996. It consists of a stylized letter E, crossed by two lines instead of one. Depending on convention in each nation, the symbol can either precede the value, or follow the value, often with an intervening space.
Theodor Waigel is a German politician of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU). He represented Neu-Ulm in the Bundestag from 1976 to 2002.
Bulgaria plans to adopt the euro and become the 21st member state of the eurozone. The Bulgarian lev has been on the currency board since 1997 through a fixed exchange rate of the lev against the Deutsche Mark and the euro. Bulgaria's target date for introduction of the euro is 1 January 2025, which would make the euro only the second national currency of the country since the lev was introduced over 140 years ago. The official exchange rate is 1.95583 lev for 1 euro.
Herman Achille, Count Van Rompuy is a Belgian politician, who served as the prime minister of Belgium from 2008 to 2009, and then as the first permanent president of the European Council from 2009 to 2014.
The euro came into existence on 1 January 1999, although it had been a goal of the European Union (EU) and its predecessors since the 1960s. After tough negotiations, the Maastricht Treaty entered into force in 1993 with the goal of creating an economic and monetary union (EMU) by 1999 for all EU states except the UK and Denmark.
The enlargement of the eurozone is an ongoing process within the European Union (EU). All member states of the European Union, except Denmark which negotiated an opt-out from the provisions, are obliged to adopt the euro as their sole currency once they meet the criteria, which include: complying with the debt and deficit criteria outlined by the Stability and Growth Pact, keeping inflation and long-term governmental interest rates below certain reference values, stabilising their currency's exchange rate versus the euro by participating in the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, and ensuring that their national laws comply with the ECB statute, ESCB statute and articles 130+131 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The obligation for EU member states to adopt the euro was first outlined by article 109.1j of the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, which became binding on all new member states by the terms of their treaties of accession.
Events from the year 1998 in the European Union.
Events from the year 1999 in the European Union.
The history of the European Union between 1993 and 2004 was the period between its creation and the 2004 enlargement. The European Union was created at the dawn of the post–Cold War era and saw a series of successive treaties laying the ground for the euro, foreign policy and future enlargement. Three new member states joined the previous twelve in this period and the European Economic Area extended the reach of the EU's markets to three more.
The European Union (EU) uses a number of symbols, including the Flag of Europe, Anthem of Europe, Motto of the European Union and Europe Day.
Events in the year 1995 in the European Union.
The international status and usage of the euro has grown since its launch in 1999. When the euro formally replaced 12 currencies on 1 January 2002, it inherited their use in territories such as Montenegro and replaced minor currencies tied to pre-euro currencies, such as in Monaco. Four small states have been given a formal right to use the euro, and to mint their own coins, but all other usage outside the eurozone has been unofficial. With or without an agreement, these countries, unlike those in the eurozone, do not participate in the European Central Bank or the Eurogroup.
Croatia adopted the euro as its currency on 1 January 2023, becoming the 20th member state of the eurozone. A fixed conversion rate was set at 1 € = 7.5345 kn.
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