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
Language and the euro the same as the unit of measurement of time or of angle. The term , plural ("evroleptó", plural "evroleptá") is sometimes used when a speaker wants to be completely specific that they are referring to money and not time. Some colloquial names for currency are also in use for the euro. One and two euro coins are respectively called ("frago") and ("difrago") from the French "franc". A 5 euro banknote is also colloquially called ("taliro") from the Germanic root "thaler" via the Italian "talero". A 10 euro banknote is called ("dekariko"), a 20 euro banknote is called ("eikosariko") or ("eikosari"),