Name: The €2.50 coin.
Age: One week old, but 200 years in the making.
Appearance: Possibly the funniest thing that Belgium has ever done.
Is Belgium a particularly funny country? Oh, the funniest. The closest thing it has to a national emblem is a statue of a little boy having a wee. Belgium is the greatest.
And this coin is somehow funnier than a weeing boy? What’s on it, a pooing monkey? Better than that: a lion on a plinth.
Ha ha… ha? It’s to commemorate the bicentennial anniversary of the battle of Waterloo, stupid.
I’m still not entirely sure where the humour lies in this. So, three months ago, Belgium proposed the introduction of a commemorative Waterloo €2 coin. But, because it represented the country’s most humiliating military defeat, France vetoed it.
But this isn’t about a €2 coin. Exactly. Instead of giving up, Belgium went away and found an obscure law stating that any country in the eurozone could issue any new coins it wanted, providing they’re in an irregular denomination. So it invented a €2.5 coin, and minted 70,000 of those to commemorate Waterloo instead.
So all this is just a hopelessly convoluted way for Belgium to stick it to France? Exactly. It’s like Scotland printing up a £7.50 note plastered with the crying faces of all its ousted Labour MPs.
That is actually kind of brilliant, isn’t it? All of Belgium is great. It went 18 months without a government once, plus it invented roller skates, pralines and saxophones. Belgium is the country all other countries aspire to be.
How has France taken this? To be fair, incredibly sanguinely. However, this year is also the 500th anniversary of the French victory at Marignano, and Italy recently was among the nations which similarly vetoed plans for a commemorative €2 coin.
Are you suggesting that France will copy Belgium and make a €2.50 coin specifically to annoy Italy? It’s not definite but, by God, I hope so.
This is fun, eh? It is. And it will be, right up until someone makes a €2.50 Bayeux tapestry coin.
Do say: “I knew money would tear Europe apart, but not like this.”
Don’t say: “Still, at least that’s Europe’s biggest problem solved.”
