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Notes printed in Berlin have more currency for bank customers who fear a ‘value crisis.’ Ordinary Germans have begun to reject euro bank notes with serial numbers from Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal, raising concerns that public support for monetary union may be waning in the eurozone’s anchor country.

Germany’s Handelsblatt newspaper says bankers have detected a curious pattern where customers are withdrawing cash directly from branches, screening the notes to determine the origin of issue. They ask for paper from the southern states to be exchanged for German notes.

Each country prints its own notes according to its economic weight, under strict guidelines from the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. The German notes have an “X”‘ at the start of the serial numbers, showing that they come from the Bundesdruckerei in Berlin.

Italian notes have an “S” from the Instituto Poligrafico in Rome, and Spanish notes have a “V” from the Fabrica Nacional de Moneda in Madrid. The notes are entirely interchangeable and circulate freely through the eurozone and, indeed, beyond.People clearly suspect that southern notes may lose value in a crisis, or if the eurozone breaks apart. This is what happened in the US in the Jackson era of the 1840s when dollar notes from different regions traded at different values.

“The scurrilous idea behind this is that if the eurozone should succumb to growing divergences, then it is best to cling to most stable countries,” said the Handelsblatt. […]

A group of leading German professors warned at the outset of EMU that the euro would tend to be weaker than old Deutsche Mark, and that it would fuel inflation over time. German citizens were never given a vote on the abolition of the D-Mark, which had become a symbol of Germany’s rebirth after the war.Many have kept a stash of D-Marks hidden in mattresses to this day. A recent IPOS poll showed that 59pc of Germany now had serious doubts about the euro.

Serial number

Greece Ελλάδα [Ellada] 1 X Germany Deutschland 2 (W) (Denmark) Danmark (3) V Spain España 4 U France France 5 T Ireland Éire/Ireland 6 S Italy Italia 7 (R) (Luxembourg) Luxembourg/Luxemburg/Lëtzebuerg (8) (Q) Not used P Netherlands Nederland 1 (O) Not used N Austria Österreich 3 M Portugal Portugal 4 L Finland Suomi/Finland 5 (K) (Sweden) Sverige (6) (J) (United Kingdom) United Kingdom (7) (I) Not used H Slovenia Slovenija 9 G Cyprus Κύπρος [Kypros]/Kıbrıs 1 F Malta Malta 2 E Slovakia Slovensko 3

⁽¹⁾ checksum of the 11 digits without the letter

• The positions of Denmark and Greece have been swapped in the list of letters starting the serial numbers, presumably because Υ (upsilon) is a letter of the Greek alphabet, while W is not.
• Ireland‘s first official language is Irish; however, in the above chart it is clear the order was based on the English Ireland rather than the Irish which is Éire. Note that if the Irish spelling were used, Ireland would be represented by the letter V, which is not used in the Irish language except in some borrowed words. By using Ireland, the letter T is acquired, which is used in the Irish language.
• In the case of Finland, which has two official languages that are also official EU languages (Finnish and Swedish), the order was based on the Finnish Suomi instead of the Swedish Finland, presumably because Finnish is the majority language in the country.
• Belgium has three official languages, all of which are official EU languages. Luxembourg also has three official languages, with two being official EU languages. However, in these cases, the countries’ positions in the list would be the same no matter which language was used.

The notes of Luxembourg currently use the prefix belonging to the country where they were printed.

Although the Slovenian letter had been reserved since the eurozone enlargement in January 2007, the country initially used previously issued banknotes issued from other member states. The first banknotes bearing the “H” letter, produced in France specifically on behalf of Slovenia, were witnessed no sooner than April 2008^[11].The ‘Cypriot banknotes’ (G) appeared in circulation in November 2009, whereas, those from Malta (F) appeared 3 months later (February,2010).^[12]

It seems from that further country codes are assigned in reverse order from the last assigned code “J” for the UK, according to the time a country joins the Eurozone. When two or more countries join at the same time, the same rule is followed as with the initial assignments of country codes, i.e. the country codes are alphabetised according to the countries’ names in the official language of each country, but reversed. “H” was assigned to Slovenia which joined the Eurozone in 2007 following “J” which was the last letter assigned so far, to the UK. Then when Cyprus and Malta joined in 2008, “G” was assigned to Cyprus (Κύπρος [Kypros] in Greek, Kıbrıs in Turkish, the island’s two official languages both starting with the letter K), “F” was assigned to Malta and “E” was assigned for last member Slovakia.

It has been suggested^{[citation needed]} that, should the prefixes change to two characters, the code should be the state’s ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code (e.g., EE for Estonia, DE for Germany, IT for Italy).

The initial design of the euro with the 2002 signature of Wim Duisenberg, has been issued in each of the 7 denominations by each of the NCBs of Finland, Portugal, Austria, the Netherlands, Italy, Ireland, France, Spain, Germany, Greece and Belgium, with the exception of the €200 and €500 banknotes from Portugal and the €200 banknote from Ireland. Thus, there are 74 country/denomination varieties of the banknotes with the Duisenberg signature.

After the initial introduction of the euro by these eleven NCBs, in 2002, each NCB was tasked with issuing only a subset of the denominations; for example, only 4 NCBs continued to issue the €50 note for several years thereafter. This decentralised pooling scheme means that the NCBs have to exchange the denominations issued in different countries prior to issue, and often source the banknotes they issue from multiple printers. This also means that some country/signature combinations are much scarcer than others; specifically the Duisenberg signatures of the €200 note from Finland, the €100 note from Portugal, €100 and €500 notes from Ireland and €200 and €500 notes from Greece. Also, the banknotes issued subsequent to 2003, carrying the signature of J.C. Trichet are not found in every denomination from every country. As of the end of 2007, only 30 of the 77 possible combinations of banknotes with the Trichet signature were known, but additional combinations continue to be released, along with incremental banknotes issued in 2008 by the NCB of Slovenia, carrying the serial prefix letter “H.”^[13]

[edit]Printing works

On each of the 7 denominations of the banknote, there is a small six-character printing code which uniquely identifies the printing information of each banknote.

These printing codes have an initial letter, followed by 3 digits, followed by a single letter, and ending in a digit, for example, “G013B6.”

The initial letter identifies the printing facility, as described below. “G” for example would be Enschede & Sons, a printer in the Netherlands. The 3 digits identify sequential printing plates. “013,” for example, would be the 13th printing plate created by the printer. The fifth character, a letter and sixth character, a number, represent the row and column, respectively, of the particular banknote on the particular plate. So “B” would be the second row and “6” would indicate the sixth column.^[14]

Banknotes are printed in sheets, with different printers using different sheet sizes, and sheets of higher denominations, which are larger in size, would have fewer banknotes printed per sheet. For example, the two German printers print €5 banknotes in sheets of 60 (10 rows, designated “A” through “J” and 6 columns), the sheets for €10 banknotes have 54 banknotes (9 rows, 6 columns), and for €20 banknotes have 45 banknotes (9 rows, 5 columns) ^[15]

The printer code need not coincide with the country code, i.e. notes issued by a particular country may have been printed in another country. The printers include commercial printers as well as national printers, some of whom have been privatized, who previously produced national notes prior to the adoption of the euro. There is one former or current national printer in each of the note-issuing country, with the exception of Germany, where the former East German and West German printers now produce euro banknotes. There are also two printers identified in France, F. C. Oberthur, a private printer and the Bank of France printing works, and also in the United Kingdom; Thomas De La Rue, a major private printer, and the Bank of England printing house, which currently does not produce euro banknotes.^[16]

• The A, C and S codes have been reserved for printers currently not printing euro banknotes.
• Where a printer is listed as producing bankotes for a particular country, this may apply to a single denomination, or as many as all seven denominations. Some NCBs source different denominations from different printers (Greece sourcing from 5 different printers), and some source even a single denomination from multiple printers (the Netherlands has sourced the €5 note from five different printers up to March 2009). NCBs that issue banknotes are free to source from any authorized printers, and do so in varying quantities. As of June 2008, there are a total of 133 known printer/signature/country/denomination combinations of euro banknotes; with more combinations surely to follow, much to the delight of banknote collectors.