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According to an investigation of the University of Lausanne, the ratio of counterfeited banknotes was about 10 in one million real banknotes for the Swiss franc, of 100 in one million for United States dollar and of 300 in one million for pound sterling. [113] In 2011, 606,000 euro counterfeits were removed from circulation (41 per million).
The euro was implemented on 1 January 1999, when it became the currency of over 300 million people in Europe. [12] For the first three years of its existence it was an invisible currency, only used in accountancy. euro cash was not introduced until 1 January 2002, when it replaced the national banknotes and coins of the countries in eurozone 12, such as the French franc and the Spanish peseta.
Sterling (ISO code: GBP) is the currency of the United Kingdom and nine of its associated territories. [3] The pound is the main unit of sterling, [4] [c] and the word pound is also used to refer to the British currency generally, [7] often qualified in international contexts as the British pound or the pound sterling. [4]
The European Currency Unit was an accounting unit used by the EU, based on the currencies of the member states; it was not a currency in its own right. They could not be set earlier, because the ECU depended on the closing exchange rate of the non-euro currencies (principally pound sterling) that day.
In English the euro sign – like the dollar sign $ and the pound sign £ – is usually placed before the figure, unspaced, [8] the reverse of usage in many other European languages. When written out, "euro" is placed after the value in lower case; the plural is used for two or more units, and euro cents are separated with a full-stop, not a ...
The euro is the result of the European Union's project for economic and monetary union that came fully into being on 1 January 2002 and it is now the currency used by the majority of the European Union's member states, with all but Denmark (which has an opt-out in the EU treaties) bound to adopt it.
The UK spent over £6 billion trying to keep its currency, the pound sterling, within the narrow limits prescribed by ERM, but was forced to exit the programme within two years after the pound sterling came under major pressure from currency speculators. The ensuing crash of 16 September 1992 was subsequently dubbed "Black Wednesday."
The pound sterling banknotes in current circulation consist of Series G Bank of England notes in denominations of £5, £10, £20 and £50. The obverse of these banknotes issued through 4 June 2024 feature the portrait of Elizabeth II originally introduced in 1990.