Euro sign
euro sign (U+20AC): currency symbol for the European Monetary Union; the euro is not the ECU!
The euro sign (€) is the currency sign used for the euro, the official currency of the eurozone. The design was presented to the public by the European Commission on 12 December 1996. It consists of a stylized letter E (or epsilon), crossed by two lines instead of one. Depending on convention in each nation, the symbol can either precede or follow the value, e.g., €10 or 10 €, often with an intervening space.
Design
There were originally 30 proposed designs for a symbol for Europe's new common currency. Of these, the Commission made a short-list of ten candidates and put these ten out to a public survey. The President of the European Commission at the time (Jacques Santer) and the European Commissioner with responsibility for the euro (Yves-Thibault de Silguy) then chose the winning design. The other designs that were considered but not shortlisted are not available for the public to view, nor is any information about the designers available for public query. The Commission considers the process of designing to have been internal and keeps these records secret. The eventual winner was a design created by a team of four experts whose identities have not been revealed.
“Euro sign” enters the record as euro sign (U+20AC): currency symbol for the European Monetary Union; the euro is not the ECU. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Euro, sign and euro can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Euro sign” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Euro, sign and euro provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18100. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1996.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Euro sign”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Euro sign primary sources, Euro sign archive and Euro research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Euro sign” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.