Greece and the Euro
The poorest member of the EU, Greece saw EMU as an essential step towards achieving its strategic and economic ambitions. In spite of the euro weakness when Greece entered the Eurozone on January 1 2001, opinion polls showed that some 70 per cent of Greeks were in favour of membership. There was little attachment to the drachma, as europe's second oldest currency was linked in Greek minds with economic and political backwardness. Greece leveraged the euro to encourage foreign direct investment with a view to the country becoming a business and transport hub, linking south east Europe with EU markets.
The Minister for the National Economy and the Governor of the Bank of Greece chose the designs for their euro coins from a set of proposals presented by a national technical and artistic committee. The designer of the winning motifs was sculptor Georges Stamatopoulos, sponsored by the Bank of Greece.
There is a separate design for each denomination. This coin depicts a scene from a mosaic in Sparta (third century AD), showing Europa being abducted by Zeus, who has taken the form of a
bull. Europa is a figure from Greek mythology after whom Europe was named. Edge lettering of the €2 coin: EΛΛHNIKH ΔHMOKPATIA (Hellenic Republic).
All designs feature the 12 stars of the EU, the year of imprint and a tiny symbol of the Bank of Greece (the anthemion flower). Uniquely, the value of the coins is expressed on the national side in the Greek alphabet, as well as being on the common side in the Roman alphabet. The euro cent is known as the lepto (plural lepta) in Greek, in reference to the former currency, the Drachma, which was divided into 100 lepta.
