Make euro banknotes great, for the first time

Euro banknotes are... boring. The designs chosen for the new currency in 2002 skipped any debate on the highlights of European culture or history. Instead, we got fictional, abstract architecture not intended to resemble or favour any real structure in a European country, with gates and windows on the front of the notes, and bridges on the back. But banknotes could be getting more interesting. You can now join eight million people who have already voted for one of many new designs put forward by the European Central Bank. There are 10 sets of potential new notes that Europeans can rate by 21 September. Like the Eurovision song contest, the popular vote doesn't necessarily determine the final result. The heads of the national central banks will have the final word later this year on the winning design. It will take several years for any new notes to be put into circulation. Five designs are based on famous Europeans, and the other five on rivers and birds. Three of the six Europeans selected for the notes are women. That's a far better ratio than the ECB's own governing council, which counts just two among its 27 members, including ECB president Christine Lagarde. Greek-American opera singer Maria Callas appears on the €5, French-Polish physicist and chemist Marie Curie is on €20, and Czech-Austrian peace activist Bertha von Suttner gets €200. German composer Ludwig von Beethoven pops up on the €10 note, Spanish novelist Miguel de Cervantes is on the €50, and Italian inventor and painter Leonardo da Vinci takes the €100. For the nature theme, the €5 note gets a wallcreeper against a mountain spring, the €10 has a kingfisher and a waterfall, and the €20 has a bee-eater in a river valley. The €50 has a white stork over a meandering river, €100 gets an avocet and a river mouth, and €200 has a northern gannet and the sea. These are all birds whose habitats span wide ranges across Europe, and none of them are endangered. Colours for most designs are subdued, but there's a flash of contrast for the bird designs by Atelier Goppel-Toperngpong and Ville Tietäväinen. For the portraits, Jan Robert Dünnweller breaks with the crowd of photos or paintings with some line drawings, where Beethoven's hair takes on extra lift. You can vote for your favourite new euro banknotes here.