Euros in Estonia

Since I'm in Estonia to do research, I figure I should talk a little about it. Although, much of what I'm about to post probably won't end up in my final paper as it really isn't part of my research, just something I found interesting.

I've ended up spending most of the afternoon reading about Euro coins and banknotes. Most of you know that all Euro coins have a national side, representing the country they were produced for. Since Estonia only recently adopted the Euro, I imagine most people have not seen an Estonian Euro coin.


(From the ECB)

It's not terribly exciting, but now you know. While some countries change up the design on each coin, all Estonian coins have the same map. This coin caused a small amount of controversy as a Russian lawyer claimed that the borders on the coin didn't match with the actual Estonian-Russian border. The Russian government was quick to dismiss this claim, which kind of makes me wonder what this lawyer hoped to gain from making this claim. Intriguingly, there was a counter-claim made by the Seto people who thought that the map should include parts of Russia. The Seto are an ethnic minority related to Estonians whose traditional lands got split when Estonia became independent. They want the border to be returned to where it was prior to Soviet Occupation, wherein their lands were all within Estonia.


(From Wikimedia)

This map shows the regions that became part of Russia. While Estonia briefly claimed these territories, it seems that they have largely dropped these claims, perhaps because the population in these regions are over 90% Russian. Last year, a town in one of these regions petitioned Moscow to be allowed to break off and join Estonia. This was mostly done for publicity though, to call attention to what they felt was unfair treatment.

While Euro banknotes don't include any designs on them to signify which nation they are for as the coins do, I learned today that you can determine where a banknote is from based on the letter before the serial number. Each country gets its own letter, so all Estonian banknotes have "D" before the serial number. Or rather, they would have a "D" if any existed. Because Estonia is so small, they have decided it would be too costly to produce their own banknotes and instead use banknotes from Finland and Germany. Checking my own wallet, I found I have one banknote from Germany, Finland, and Spain each. Apparently Malta has produced its own Euro banknotes despite having a third of the population of Estonia, but maybe they don't produce banknotes regularly.