Euro banknotes in August 2018, there were about 21.737 billion banknotes in circulation around the Eurozone, with a total value of about €1.193 trillion. On 8 November 2012, the European Central Bank announced that the first series of notes would be replaced by the Europa series, starting with the 5 euro note on 2 May 2013. Estimates suggest that the average life of a euro banknote is about three years before it is replaced due to wear, but individual lifespans vary depending on denomination, from less than a year for €5 banknote to over 30 years for €500 banknote. High denomination banknotes
Euro banknotes The notes also carry the acronyms of the name of the European Central Bank in five linguistic variants, covering all official languages of the EU in 2002 (the time of the banknote introduction), and now 19 out of 24 official languages of the EU28, in the following order: The order is determined by the EU country listing order, with BCE ahead of ECB because of the national precedence of Belgium's two main languages, followed by the remaining languages of Germany ("Deutschland"), Greece ("Ελλάδα/Elláda") and Finland ("Suomi"), in that order. The euro banknote initial designs were chosen from 44 proposals in