Many Europeans Still Troubled by Euro
January 13, 2005
BRUSSELS, Belgium - Three years after the introduction of euro cash, almost half the citizens in the 12 nations that use the currency still struggle to replace francs, marks and lire in their hearts and minds, a survey released Thursday showed.
Irish
male teenagers are most at home with the new currency, according to the poll
commissioned by the European Union's head office, while 30-something women from the Italian countryside
still hanker for their lost lira.
The
survey found 16 percent of citizens expressed "a lot of difficulty"
with the euro and 33 percent said they had "some difficulty" paying
with the multinational cash.
Some
52 percent of citizens in the euro-zone nations have "no difficulty at
all" in using the new currency, up one percentage point from a similar
survey last year, the rounded figures showed.
The
Eurobarometer poll highlighted big national differences.
In
Ireland, 78 percent had no difficulty, followed by Luxembourg with 71 percent
and Greece with 69 percent.
In
contrast, citizens of the currency bloc's three largest nations struggled the
most. Only 35 percent of Italians were fully at ease with the euro, 42 percent
of French and 56 percent of Germans.
Across
the bloc, 57 percent of men had no problems using the euro, compared to 45
percent of women. The 15-24 age group was most at ease with the euro, those aged
25-39 were less happy, the poll showed.
City
dwellers generally had less difficulty than those from rural areas.
In
their day-to-day shopping, just 25 percent said they still did most of their
mental calculations in their defunct national currencies, but for exceptional
purchases such as houses or cars, 49 percent still think in guilders, francs,
pesetas and the other old monies.
More
than 90 percent of those asked said they were now at ease distinguishing the
different denominations of euro banknotes, 72 percent with euro coins.
Sixty
percent said they would not mind if the 1 cent and 2 cent coins were dropped
from circulation, as some EU governments are considering. Only 29 percent want
the 1 euro coin replaced by a bill.
The
European Commission expressed surprise that only 38 percent of citizens were aware that
they can use bank cards for purchases and cash withdrawals in other euro-zone
nations without facing extra fees.
The poll was based on telephone interviews with around 1,000 people in each of the 12 euro-zone nations. It carried an average margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.
SOURCE: Yahoo News