‘Europe in your Pocket’: narratives of identity in euro iconography

Abstract

European institutions have long been concerned with how citizens perceive them and how this is connected to shifting notions of Europe and collective identities. This article contributes to the analysis of EU narratives as revealed by the design of the euro banknotes, their intended institutional meaning and the debate they raised. The seven denominations’ main images are bridges and doors, inspired by European architectural styles, but representing abstract symbols and not actual landmarks. In the public debate, this has attracted more criticism than praise; scholars, too, have generally been dismissive. In this article, I aim to provide an interpretation of how currency iconography becomes the medium of both accepted and occasionally contested narratives of identity. First I consider how the euro was designed and officially promoted; then I advance a critique of the main interpretations, as an indicator of accepted (or unacceptable) representations of Europe. Available narratives will finally be rethought through an analysis of the significance of the bridge and the door as cultural symbols, following Georg Simmel’s essay on the subject. The significance of this will emerge in relation to the wider relevance of architectural metaphors of Europe as tropes in narratives of European identity.

Keywords:

• Currency
• iconography
• euro
• narrative
• identity

Notes

1. The Guardian, 10 June 2015. At https://www.theguardian.com/business/shortcuts/2015/jun/10/euro-coin-row-france-wins-the-battle-belgium-wins-the-war (accessed December 2016).

2. The literature in the area usually aims to establish a causal link. The dominant approach sees the state as pedagogue trying to bring about change via currency iconography (see Gilbert and Helleiner 1999; building on national cases from the nineteenth century onwards). Others have criticised this, arguing for the opposite by claiming states adapt their imagery to dominant values so as to gain legitimacy (Hymans 2004).

3. The wider popular reception of the euro iconography since its launch is beyond the scope of this article, which, in focusing on institutional narratives and public debate, aims at questioning the available narratives of identity the euro can be mobilised for and contributes to establish.

4. Perhaps because allegorical thus in need of a dose of ‘reality’, this particular portrait is far from anonymous, with lots of detail provided in official texts (see press communication, at: www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/pdf/material/discover10/WEB_ECB_Public_BRO_10Euro.en.pdf?1c4892eea24fe0e0a6149872c928c2b3 (accessed December 2016).

5. This is however not an isolated case, as many banknote designs are copyrighted and some also carry the copyright notice, notably the British pound.

6. Attempts at defining inherently European elements are easily criticised, in architecture as elsewhere. An example is the arch: even though it is often appropriated as a typically European element, some note that its origins are outside Europe (cf. Gregotti 1999, 19).

7. An interesting debate is open as to whether in Simmel, as in other founders of sociology, this means by default the state – thus establishing an as yet insurmountable deficit for the euro (see for instance Cavalli 2013) – or whether instead Simmel can be exempted of the critique of methodological nationalism due to his processual notion of society, making his analysis useful in our era of both currency homogenisation and diversification (and thus leaving the verdict much more open as to the future or the euro; Dodd (2016) makes this point particularly explicitly).