Mastodawn

In 1996, tired of squabbling between EU countries about whose favorite person or building should be on the EU banknotes, the currency commission held a competition for a new design: “The ground rules for the design strictly prohibited displaying any recognizable national monuments or heroes that risked giving greater prominence to one country over another.” The winning design was a series of bridges that were stylistically typical of different kinds of European bridges, but which weren't any specific bridges. For example:

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Mark Dominus 5h ago

Then in 2011 those trolls the Dutch built seven bridges in one town that were all designed to look exactly like the imaginary banknote bridges. They even painted the bridges the same colors as the banknotes.

So now the EU banknotes depict the bridges of Spijkenisse, South Holland. (pop. 72,500)

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Mark Dominus

Apparently they are thinking of replacing the bridges with famous people, and of course the predictable squabbling has already started, why does Beethoven get to be on a Euro note and not Da Vinci? Why Curie and not Cervantes? Is it an insult to France if Beethoven is on the €100 and Curie only on the €10? Blah blah blah.

Spijkenisse has shown the way. The ECB should select, completely at random, some EU town with a population between 10,000 and 100,000, national capitals excluded. Then they should commission designs of that specific town's notable buildings or local scenery.

For example, suppose Velenje, Slovenia was selected. The €200 could bear a picture of Velenje Castle. The €5 could depict the church of St. Martin.

The random selection and general irrelevance of Velenje would help forestall complaints:

* “Why does Velenje get to be on the notes, and not Acireale, Sicily?” No reason, just luck of the draw.
* “Are you saying thet Velenje is somehow more important than all the other towns in Europe?” No, of course not. It is nowhere in particular, that's the point.
* “Cornellà de Llobregat is lovely, why didn't you choose that?” Maybe next time we will!

A random town of no particular importance can be a representative of European pride in general, a sort of everytown: “Look, Europe has such a history of beauty and culture that it doesn't matter what particular place we select to represent it, this time it was Velenje but it could have been anywhere, really.”