The Unknown Euro
The 12 countries of the euro zone are about to undergo the largest monetary changeover in history. More than 14 billion bank notes have been printed — enough to stretch to the moon and back five times. But that was the easy part. The difficult task is educating the 300 million Europeans about their new ...
The 12 countries of the euro zone are about to undergo the largest monetary changeover in history. More than 14 billion bank notes have been printed -- enough to stretch to the moon and back five times. But that was the easy part. The difficult task is educating the 300 million Europeans about their new currency. In the 21st century one would expect the World Wide Web to play a key role. Indeed, more citizens of the euro zone are now online than buy a daily paper.
The 12 countries of the euro zone are about to undergo the largest monetary changeover in history. More than 14 billion bank notes have been printed — enough to stretch to the moon and back five times. But that was the easy part. The difficult task is educating the 300 million Europeans about their new currency. In the 21st century one would expect the World Wide Web to play a key role. Indeed, more citizens of the euro zone are now online than buy a daily paper.
The Internet, though, is being remarkably underused for this purpose. The European Central Bank has a slick multilingual Web site (http://www.ecb.europa.eu) that even includes games for children. But judging by the ignorance displayed on the topic in the recent Eurobarometer survey (www.europa.eu.int/comm/dg10/epo/eb/ebrep1/ebrep1.html), maybe adults should play them, too. The survey revealed widespread ignorance about the euro — only 20 percent of European Union (EU) citizens knew the exact exchange rate of their national currency with the euro.
The Eurobarometer also exposes a trend of antipathy toward the Internet: Only 4 percent of EU citizens care to receive information about the EU online. Moreover, the site designed to help the Irish public "make the change" (www.euro.ie) only received about 120,000 hits between May 2000 and May 2001 — meaning that at most 3.3 percent of the Irish population have viewed the site. This in a country where 46 percent of adults have home Internet access. The Internet seems to figure more prominently in efforts to help businesses prepare for the changeover. But even here the Web is not being fully exploited. As John Wyles, a consultant to the European Commission, observes: "Given the opportunities the Internet offers for publication and distribution via intermediaries and multipliers, the Internet has been underutilized."
One site, though, is making superhuman efforts to inform the citizens of Europe about their new currency (www.CaptainEuro.com). Created by the for-profit firm Twelve Stars Communications, the site receives more than half a million hits each month, demonstrating how a bold, entertainment-based Internet strategy could succeed in raising awareness about the euro. Given Captain Euro’s mission to "protect Europe’s diversity," some Europeans may be concerned that his adventures are as yet available only in English.
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