ABSTRACT
In 1996 the European Monetary Institute unveiled draft designs for the European single currency banknotes. With only a small space on the back of the notes left free for the national emblems of participating states, the designs are standard, based on architectural styles of bridges and gateways, to symbolise openness and communication within Europe and with the rest of the world. In Britain the popular response, as filtered through the media, was largely one ofdismay at the projected loss of Britain's own Bank of England notes, proudly bearing a portrait of H. M. Queen Elizabeth II. Probably few people knew that the Bank had been issuing its own notes for over three hundred years, and fewer still that the monarch's portrait was introduced only in 1960; however, many perceived the proposed Euro note as undermining a national institution and as a threat to British sovereignty.
