A symbol for Europe

Inspiration for the € symbol itself came from the Greek epsilon (Є) – a reference to the cradle of European civilisation – and the first letter of the word Europe, crossed by two parallel lines to ‘certify’ the stability of the euro.

The euro symbol was created by the European Commission according to three criteria:

• that it should be a highly recognisable symbol of Europe
• that it should have a visual link with existing well-known currency symbols
• that it should be aesthetically pleasing and easy to write by hand.

The copyright for the euro symbol belongs to the European Community, represented by the European Commission, which encourages its use as a currency designator in a wide sense. However, the Commission is opposed to the registration of the symbol as part of a trademark, since this could restrict the appropriate use of the euro symbol by other parties.

Notwithstanding this general principle, where logos containing the euro symbol are sufficiently creative and different from the official euro symbol, the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (Trademarks and Designs) has, on occasion, agreed to register these as trademarks.

The success of the euro as a currency worldwide owes a small debt to the unique and memorable symbol of the currency. People and organisations are encouraged to use the name and symbol – to spread the word, so to speak – in their day-to-day business.

The euro 'rules'

The Heads of State and Government meeting in Madrid in 1995 chose the name ‘euro’ as it symbolises ‘Europe’. There are certain rules on the use of the term 'euro':

• The name of the single currency must be the same in all the official languages of the EU, taking into account the different alphabets. This is to ensure consistency and to avoid confusion in the single market.
• In all EU legal texts, the nominative singular spelling must be 'euro' in all languages ('ευρώ' in Greek alphabet; 'евро' in Cyrillic alphabet). Plural forms and declensions are accepted as long as they do not change the 'eur-' root.
• In documents other than EU legal texts, including national legislation, other spellings are accepted according to the various grammatical rules used in each language.
• The definition of the name ‘cent’ (in Greek, 'λεπτό'; in Bulgarian ' цент') does not prevent the use of variants of this term in common usage in the Member States.
• The ISO code for the euro is EUR, to be used with figures referring to amounts in euro when the euro symbol is not used.

A list of the standard spellings in each language of the words ‘euro’ and ‘cent’ in the nominative form, both singular and plural, is provided here [61 KB] .

On many computers the euro symbol can be obtained with the <ctrl>+<alt>+e keystrokes.

The term ‘euro area’ is the official term in English for the group of countries that have adopted the euro as their single currency. All other terms, such as ‘euroland’ and ‘eurozone’, are discouraged in the official language style guide.