In the century of gadgets, paper is losing its ground. We send emails instead of letters and read electronic newspapers. Even banknotes may fall into oblivion. Do not worry, the paper money will be just replaced by metallic for now. The French Mint proposed the idea of switching from bills of small denominations to coins. The Monnaie de Paris addressed their plan for the 5 euro note superseding to the EU government. Thanks to such a monetary reform, in the French minters’ opinion, the bloc may save several billions of euros. According to head of the Monnaie de Paris Christophe Beaux, in case all the 5 euro banknotes are turned into coins, the European Union will be able to make economies, in particular €10 billion. The logic is simple: thanks to the material the metal money are made of, it is much more long-lived than the banknotes. In practice, the average life of the paper money is about a year. After that, most of the notes are destroyed and replaced by new ones step by step. Meanwhile, a coin can be in circulation for about 40 years. Christophe Beaux shared his plan at the meeting in Brussels that gathered the representatives of the euro area, European Central Bank and largest financial institutions in the region. It is worth reminding that the European Commission is supposed to adopt a plan on reducing costs on making money by the end of the year. Previously this proposal had already been denied as the ECB did not support such kind of novelties.
