Call euro a euro? We prefer eiro, ewro, euras, EU newcomers say
January 8, 2006
Riga - It might be called the euro in most older EU member states, but five newcomers to the bloc have insisted they will call the single European currency by names they can get their tongues around.
Latvia, which is due to adopt the euro in 2008, said last week it would call the euro the "eiro" because the "eu" dipthong doesn't exist in Latvian.
Joining the Baltic EU newcomer in its linguistic rebellion are neighbouring Lithuania, which has opted for "euras," Hungary, which wants the "o" to have an accent, Malta, which prefers ewro, and Slovenia evro.
Although all five states are party to an EU treaty that says the single European currency must be called the euro, they have turned a deaf ear to exhortations from the European Central Bank (ECB) and various EU institutions to stick to the rule, agreed in the mid-1990s, that said the euro should be called just that throughout the EU.
"Even if all other countries were to use euro, we will never give up and will continue to use eiro," Latvian Education Minister Ina Druviete, a trained linguist, told a cabinet meeting this week at which ministers unanimously opted for the "ei" word over the "eu" one.
"This is not a monetary matter but language policy. We could, if need be, defend our rights at the European Court of Justice," Druviete said, explaining that the "eu" dipthong does not exist in the Latvian language.
The National Council of the Maltese language last month decided that the spelling of the word "euro" in Maltese will be "ewro."
In the Maltese language, the letters "e" and "u" never appear next to each other, Malta's language council said.
On the rare occasions that they do, they are pronounced as two distinct syllables, which might have made a daily trip to the shops a test in glottal gymastics once Malta makes the swap from the pound to the euro in 2008.
The dissent over what to call the euro came to light shortly after the EU expanded by 10 members in May 2004. It was then that EU officials found that there had been translation errors in the Council regulation calling for the single currency to be called by a single name.
The Netherlands, which held the EU's revolving presidency in the second half of 2004, pulled out all the stops to try to reach a compromise with the new members. They proposed that all countries should keep the "eur-" root, which could then be given different endings that sat well with a member state's language.
But two countries, tiny Malta and Latvia, whose populations together add up to less than three million, stood up to the EU and caused the Dutch compromise to founder.
The euro -- or eiro, euras, evro or ewro, call it what you like -- is already jingling in the pockets and rustling in the wallets of some 300 million people around Europe.
In any case, Malta has pointed out, the European Central Bank uses each country's different names for the currency on its website. Or did until this was pointed out to the ECB by AFP.
"Thanks for informing me about those links. Based on the Constitutional Treaty the European Central Bank uses the term 'euro' in its publications, such as the Annual Report, the Convergence Report, the Quarterly Bulletin, press releases, etc," a spokesman for the bank told AFP.
"The European Central Bank is still in the process of changing the respective publications," he added. - AFP
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