500 euro note 26 April 2019. “Authorities increasingly suspect that they (€500 notes) are being used for illegal purposes, an argument that we can no longer ignore,” according to a high-ranking bank official, Benoît Cœuré. The euro was founded on 1 January 1999, when it became the currency of over 300 million people in Europe. 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 Luxembourgish franc. Slovenia joined the
Romania and the euro law requires that the coat of arms of the country be used on coin designs. In Romanian, the currency is called "euro" , and its subunit "eurocent" . Romania and the euro Romania is required by its EU accession agreement to replace the current national currency, the Romanian leu, with the euro, as soon as Romania fulfills all of the six nominal euro convergence criteria. The leu is not yet part of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM II), of which minimum two years of stable membership is one of the six nominal convergence criteria to comply with to qualify