Stick-figure design selected for euro commemorative coin

26 February 2008

BRUSSELS – European Union citizens have picked a cave painting-like stick-figure holding the euro logo as the design for a commemorative 2-euro coin marking the 10th anniversary of the bloc’s single currency, officials in Brussels said Monday.

Created by George Stamatopoulos, a sculptor at the Central Bank of Greece, the winning design was voted by 41.5% of the 141,675 people who took part in an online competition launched by Brussels on January 31.

EU officials said the winning design symbolises the "latest step in the long history of trade, from prehistoric barter – evoked by the deliberately primitive design – to economic and monetary union."

One of the voters who picked the winning design, a Polish citizen, was rewarded with a set of gold euro collector coins worth several thousand euros, officials said.

The stick-figure will feature on some 90 million commemorative coins, to be issued by the eurozone’s 15 member states.

Such coins usually attract keen interest from coin collectors.

Europe’s single currency was first introduced in non-physical form on January 1 1999, but citizens began using euro notes and coins only three years later.