A million euro typo. According to the information from the media La Lettre, the Monnaie de Paris, the institution in charge of minting coins in France, has decided to destroy millions of centime coins. These centimes, in the end, will cost the organization between 700,000 and 1.2 million euros. But why sacrifice this amount of money? Poorly engraved stars on the coins that resulted in a design invalidated by the European Commission.
The CEO of the Monnaie de Paris, Marc Schwartz, reportedly wanted to impress Bruno Le Maire during his visit on December 7th. Prior to the visit of the Minister of the Economy, the CEO had urged the workers to mint 27 million coins of 10, 20, and 50 centimes with a new design. The workers reportedly even worked in shifts for four days at the end of November to meet their boss’s request. However, Marc Schwartz failed to wait for the required seven days to obtain approval from the Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs of the European Commission.
As a result, six days before Bruno Le Maire’s visit, the EU rejected the new look of the coins. The stars, symbols of Europe, were deemed too difficult to read on the side meant to represent the Old Continent. The tons of centimes were therefore destroyed before 27 million coins were urgently re-minted. The CEO of the Monnaie de Paris, when contacted by La Lettre, blamed “an independent delay” and pointed to “the French State” as responsible for the blunder, which represents 4% of the institution’s annual production.
In response, the Ministry of the Economy will launch an evaluation to determine the causes of this error. Marc Schwartz, on the other hand, intends to present the valid coins to Bruno Le Maire, who has been confirmed as the head of his ministry, during a future meeting.
