And no more two-cents, either. The European Commission and the European Parliament, the union’s executive and legislative arms, have agreed that the time has come, or rather passed, for the small copper coins.
The Commission’s work plan calls for ending their use by the end of this year, and for uniform rules to be in place across the zone for rounding up or down to the nearest five cents. Similar rules are already in place in a number of countries that have acted on their own to encourage the end of the penny.
The coins have a cost higher than their face value for most European countries, and for some, that is also true of the two-cent coin as well. Several of the Euro Zone countries have simply stopped making the two coins, and Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland, Ireland and Italy have dropped their use.
A 2017 zone-wide poll showed no country where the public did not support dropping the coins, so there is not likely to be a big struggle over the issue, but final votes must be taken.
The pennies that the headline refers to are similarly redundant. You end up with a pile of them – in a compartment of the car in my case – and parking meters etc. do not accept them, so the pile keeps on growing.