The euro bank note design is neat. I like the idea of putting bridges on them and it was clever to use made-up bridges instead of real ones, which would have ties to specific countries.
I'm American, so it's definitely not my place to discuss this anymore than in passing commentary, but comparing this to things like our US 50 State commemorative quarters makes me wish the world in general was in a better place.
You can pay a ten billion debt in 5€ notes, but the recipient can refuse your payment if you show up with five billion 2€ coins, which is like two thirds of the total circulation and would require several of the largest freight ships commonly used on European rivers to deliver.
Source: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/coins/html/index.en.html
Legal tender as a concept is also usually not that useful. It's perfectly legal for a shop to refuse certain coins and bills. Dutch shops commonly refuse 1 and 2 cents coins (rounding the amount to 5 cents for cash payments), as well as large denominations out of safety concerns. 100€, 200€ and 500€ are very rare as a consequence.
Source (in Dutch): https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/geldzaken/vraag-en-...
Notes need to be designed much more carefully to avoid counterfeits and if the designs differed people would be more easily tricked by a fake one or would assume that notes from another country are fake by default
Coins also don't have transparent elements like notes and aren't supposed to be inspected by using light so it's easier to have a common side and a "do whatever" side
The idea was to not exclude any one country, nor to make any one country above the others. There were only 7 banknotes when the euro started but 11 countries. If you put actual landmarks on them you'd have inevitably linked the notes to the country of the landmark, you would've made some countries inevitably feel excluded and politically you'd have created the sense that some countries are literally worth more than others
These architectural styles can be found all over the eurozone members (especially the original ones) and making them bridges makes a nice symbol of bridging and bringing countries closer together
> 50 State commemorative quarters
There's no need for that because each country independently mints the 8 coins (0.01, 0.02, 0.05, 0.10, 0.20, 0.50, 1, 2) and have their own designs on the "tail"
Coins have fixed value side and same metal so it is simpler.
Almost everywhere, almost always (if you're about to write an objection about "Legal tender", go read what that phrase actually means and reconsider) what matters is whether the person accepting the money agrees this is money. So you want as much as possible for everybody to agree that this 50 Euro note is money, while this toy money from a Monopoly set is not money. Weird money interferes with that.
You mention that there are visually distinct Scottish notes. There are. And their face value is exactly identical to English notes, also true. And yet, it is entirely possible that Scottish notes will not be accepted in my city here on England's South coast. Not because of some specific anti-Scottish bigotry but because Scotland is far away and people here have not seen your weird money.
Story time. A few years ago I was at my favourite local Chinese restaurant, buying Duck Ho Fun (somewhere the other side of the city does even bigger noodles but it's too far to walk and I'm lazy) and a guy with a strong Scottish accent comes in. He wants something boring, I don't remember what, and he tries to pay with a Scottish note. The restaurant owner does not recognise this as money. Scotsman argues he "has" to take it [this is wrong] but the restaurant owner won't, it is clear that while they're arguing nobody will be actually working on my order, so, I take the Scotsman's weird money and swap it for my English money, which the restaurant owner accepts as good. Weird money is bad.
There’s another reason. Scottish pounds aren’t issued by the central bank, but by commercial banks and aren’t legal tender on England’s south coast (technically not anywhere in the UK, including Scotland)
History lesson. The Bank of England was a commercial bank, centuries ago the English government needed money for a navy to fight the French, and their scheme to raise money to pay for it was to agree that a Bank, the Bank of England, shall be created, a Limited Liability Corporation, owned by shareholders, able exclusively to issue notes against government borrowing. For the next few hundred years these shareholders and their successors did very well off this arrangement, and the Royal Navy was powerful enough even into the 20th century that it made Unternehmen Seelöwe [Sealion, a proposed invasion of England by Axis forces after the fall of France] completely impractical even though Hitler really wanted to.
However, in the intervening centuries England became just one constituent part of Britain, and in 1946 the by now very much British government decided to Nationalise the bank, so today it's no longer a private commercial business.
They're legal tender and most people know about them, but they're very rare to see in circulation and use so there's the occasional shopkeeper or business that refuses them out of either ignorance or abundance of caution.
For coins, that’s less of a problem because they’re worth less and because it’s harder to make lots of money with fake coins (you’d have to make lots of them and, more importantly, find a way to spend them rapidly. Paying an expensive car/watch/smartphone/etc with coins is highly suspicious)
All people are imperfect, whether they are famous or not. If someone achieved something truly remarkable in their life I don't see why we shouldn't appreciate and respect the fact they existed, imperfections included, with symbols such as statues and other imagery.
Not to mention that any imperfections an individual has should be seen and considered with the context of their time. It certainly won't excuse their imperfections (nor is that the intent anyway), but doing so furthers understanding history properly so we can strive to be better today.
This is all tangential, though, since we're talking about imagery of landmarks and cultures. I find it sad that the EU has to rely on not including anyone/anything to avoid stepping on toes. I understand and appreciate why those toes must not be stepped on at any cost, but that doesn't change my opinion that it's all very sad.
And there's a big difference between history and aspiration. Poland's holocaust museum at Auschwitz-Birkenau is about history. Find out about what exactly did happen here, the circumstances in which it happened, and the consequences. Its existence isn't - and hasn't been claimed in some "modern, progressive fetish" to be - unacceptable just because nobody should ever do that again, it's kind of the whole point of the site.
On the other hand a statue of a Confederate General erected in your town square in 1964, the year MLK Jr won the Nobel Peace Prize, isn't there because of "history" it's there to remind black people that your town is actively proud of enslaving their ancestors and given a chance would do it all again.