The History of the Euro begins well before it actually came into existence. Back in 1957, European countries joined together with a single purpose in mind- improving the prosperity of their economies. A common European market developed from this concept. Protected in the “Treaty of Rome,” the newly established common market unified European people as they strove to prosper on a higher level.

About thirty years later in 1986, the concept of a unified market continued with the Single European Act of 1986 as it began to lay a basis for the Euro by introducing the Economic and Monetary Union or EMU as it is commonly known as. Several years later, the Treaty on European Union of 1992 further stressed the importance of the Economic and Monetary Union or EMU.

However, despite this initial ground work, it wasn’t until 1999 that the plan went into its final stages of preparation for a single currency. The idea was to do away with individual currencies while creating a single currency that would become known as the Euro. Eleven different European countries worked together to create a conversion rate among all of the different currencies to create the Euro, which eventually came into its official existence on January 1, 2002.

The phasing out of the old currencies came about gradually over the next two months. Old currencies were no longer used as legal tender now that the Euro had taken over. Originally, the Euro was designed as seven individual bank notes of varying denominations. The values of these notes included 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, and 500 Euros.

Euro coins came out at the same time. The original coins included a national symbol on one side of the coin. Am identical European design was placed on the second side of all Euro coins at this time. Specific guidelines for future designs of the coins were developed in 2005.