Ten years later, the word “euro” in a headline is usually paired with the word “crisis.” Instead of hosting celebrations for the 10-year anniversary, policy makers appear to be staying as quiet as possible, as if hoping not to upset the brief calm that has come with the holiday season after European central bankers injected nearly $640 billion into the European banking system in December.

In Brussels, there will be neither a ceremony nor even a news conference to mark the occasion. That set the tone for other countries, many of which were doing the minimum: preparing to circulate a 2-euro commemorative coin for the anniversary.

The coin features the kind of generic symbols — a family, a ship, a factory and wind turbines — that have earned the euro a reputation as a currency designed by committee not to offend anyone, but unlikely to inspire, either.

Even without the crisis, the day 10 years ago may be one better quickly forgotten. Far more than the celebrations, what stuck in the minds of consumers after changing to the euro was the rounding up of prices at supermarkets, restaurants and bars.

Economists say that the increases were exaggerated and offset by declining prices for bigger-ticket items. But the narrative of opportunistic price-gouging on daily staples has grown rather than shrunk in the collective memory. And the perception is widespread in the euro zone that the cost of living has increased significantly as a result of its adoption.

“The problem is that for Germans, the last prices in Deutsche marks are frozen in the heads of people, and they compare the euro prices now with those,” said Ansgar Belke, research director at the German Institute for Economic Research and a member of the monetary expert panel of the European Parliament.

He said that when he went on radio shows recently to talk about the complexities of the currency union, all the callers wanted to talk about were the price increases. “The people are all thinking that the euro is a huge betrayal,” Mr. Belke said.

By many measures, the euro has been a success, replacing the German mark as the world’s second-largest reserve currency. Inflation has been kept in check, the European Central Bank’s primary objective.

The euro is still worth more compared with the dollar than when it was introduced as a trading currency in 1999 at $1.18, three years before the metal and paper euros landed in consumers’ hands. But it hit a 15-month low against the dollar last week at around $1.29, while against the yen the euro scraped 10-year lows, briefly dipping under 100 yen.

But the euro has conjured little of the affection or patriotism that the dollar evokes in America, no nickname comparable to the greenback. The fondest memories are reserved for the old national currencies.

For Ivan Grossi, a sales representative who works in Rome, the advent of the new currency was never much to celebrate. “I grew up with the lira, it was like one of the family, and I felt an enormous sadness when the euro was introduced,” he said.

Jason Charbit, a Frenchman studying business across the channel in London, called the euro bills “Monopoly money.” “Franc bills were more solid,” he said. “You had the impression you had real money.”

Michel Prieur, a numismatist in Paris and a member of the collectors group The Friends of the Euro, said that if policy makers were trying to create warm feelings toward their currency, they had gone about it all wrong, with sterile architectural designs on the bills. Coins usually have national designs on the back, but the bills have “bridges that come from nowhere and that lead nowhere” and “windows that open onto nothing,” he said.

Reinhold Gerstetter, a graphic designer who worked for Germany’s Federal Printing Office at the time, sat in on the preliminary discussions at the European Central Bank. In order not to snub any individual country, “none of the countries should be recognizable” in the designs, he told the German news site Spiegel Online last week. “Everything completely neutral,” he said.

Scott Sayare and Doreen Carvajal contributed reporting from Paris, and Elisabetta Povoledo from Rome.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/world/europe/euro-is-10-years-old-but-few-are-celebrating.html?partner=rss&emc=rss