Reserve currency economy, the German Deutsche Mark gained the status of the second most important reserve currency after the US dollar. When the euro was introduced on 1 January 1999, replacing the Mark, French franc and ten other European currencies, it inherited the status of a major reserve currency from the Mark. Since then, its contribution to official reserves has risen continually as banks seek to diversify their reserves, and trade in the eurozone continues to expand. Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said in September 2007 that the euro could replace the U.S. dollar as the world's primary reserve currency.
Euro sign Euro sign The euro sign (€) is the currency sign used for the euro, the official currency of the European Union (EU) and other non-EU countries (Kosovo and Montenegro). The design was presented to the public by the European Commission on 12 December 1996. The international three-letter code (according to ISO standard ISO 4217) for the euro is EUR. In Unicode it is encoded at . In English, the sign precedes the value (for instance, €10, not 10 €, unlike most other European languages). In some style guides, but not others, the euro sign is unspaced. The first letter of