Austria's Currency Choice: Euro Or Aud?

Austria's currency is the Euro, which is also used in 19 of the 27 member states of the European Union. Austria was one of the first countries to adopt the Euro as its official currency in 1999, and the first banknotes and coins were introduced in 2002. Before the Euro, the Austrian Schilling was the country's currency.

Austria adopted the Euro in 1999

Austria is on the Euro, not the AUD. In fact, Austria was one of the first countries to adopt the Euro on 1 January 1999, after joining the European Union in 1995. The Euro banknotes and coins were introduced in Austria on 1 January 2002, after a three-year transitional period where the Euro was the official currency but only existed as 'book money'. During this time, the dual circulation period meant that both the schilling and the euro had legal tender status, which ended on 28 February 2002.

Austria's history with the Euro is interesting. Before the Euro, Austria had a fundamentally "fearful" relationship with floating exchange rates, which were considered susceptible to high volatility and potential long-lasting exchange rate misalignments. This fear, combined with a deeply entrenched concern about inflation, led to a decision to maintain a tight peg against the Deutsche Mark (DEM) in the 1970s. This rate was kept within a very narrow fluctuation margin of +/- 0.1% from November 1981 until the adoption of the Euro in January 1999.

Austria's decision to adopt the Euro was also influenced by its desire for stable inflation expectations, improved trade performance, and greater exchange rate stability. The Euro's introduction in 2002 marked the end of the Austrian schilling as a form of payment, though the Austrian National Bank continues to exchange schillings for Euros without time limits.

The Euro replaced the Austrian Schilling

Austria's currency is the Euro (EUR). It is one of 20 EU countries that uses the Euro. Austria was one of the first countries to adopt the Euro in 1999, and the first banknotes and coins were introduced into circulation in 2002.

Prior to the Euro, the Austrian Schilling was the country's currency. The Schilling was first introduced in 1925 and was the currency of Austria from 1925 to 1938, and again from 1945 to 1999. It was the circulating currency until 2002.

The Schilling was established by the Schilling Act (Schillingrechnungsgesetz) of 20 December 1924, at a rate of one Schilling to 10,000 Kronen. The first Schillings were issued on 1 March 1925. The Schilling was abolished in 1938 following Germany's annexation of Austria, when it was replaced by the German Reichsmark.

The Schilling was reintroduced after World War II on 30 November 1945 by the Allied Military. The exchange rate to the Reichsmark was 1:1, limited to 150 Schillings per person. The Nationalbank also began issuing Schilling notes in 1945, and the first coins were issued in 1946.

The Schilling was divided into 100 Groschen. In the years following World War II, the most commonly used coins were the 5 and 10 Groschen, as well as the 1, 5, and 10 Schillings.

The Euro was introduced at a fixed parity of €1 = 13.7603 Schillings. The period of dual circulation, during which the Schilling and the Euro were both recognised as legal tender, came to an end on 28 February 2002.

Although the Schilling is no longer in circulation, it can still be exchanged for Euros at the Austrian National Bank (Oesterreichische Nationalbank).

Euro banknotes began circulating in 2002

Austria's currency is the Euro, which was first introduced in 1999. Euro banknotes and coins were put into circulation on 1 January 2002, marking the end of a three-year transition period during which the euro only existed as 'book money' used in financial markets.

The Euro rapidly replaced the former national currencies of Eurozone members and slowly expanded around the European Union. The first series of Euro banknotes, issued in 2002, comprised seven different denominations: €5, €10, €20, €50, €100, €200 and €500. These banknotes are being gradually replaced by the second series, also known as the Europa series, which was introduced to improve security and durability. The first Europa series banknotes began circulating in 2013, and the series was completed in May 2019.

The symbol for the Euro is €

The euro sign was first presented to the public by the European Commission on 12 December 1996. There were originally 30 proposed designs for a symbol for Europe's new common currency, which the Commission shortlisted to ten candidates. These ten were put to a public survey. The winning design was created by a team of four experts whose identities have not been revealed, although Gazet van Antwerpen has attributed the symbol to Belgian graphic designer Alain Billiet.

The symbol € is usually placed before the figure in English, unlike in many other European languages. For example, four euros would be written as €4. When written out in words, "euro" is placed after the value in lower case. For example, "four euros". The plural is used for two or more units, and euro cents are separated with a full stop, not a comma. For example, €1.50, 14 euros.

The euro is represented in Unicode as U+20AC € EURO SIGN. In modern computer systems and mobile phones, this is the only codepoint used. However, when it was first introduced, there were challenges in displaying the euro sign consistently in computer applications due to different vendors assigning the euro sign to different code positions in their historic encoding schemes.

19 of the 27 member states of the European Union use the Euro

Austria uses the Euro. It was one of the first countries to adopt the currency in 1999, and the first Euro banknotes and coins were introduced into circulation in 2002.

The Euro is the official currency of 20 out of 27 EU member countries, which together constitute the Eurozone. These 20 countries are:

• Austria
• Belgium
• Croatia
• Cyprus
• Estonia
• Finland
• France
• Germany
• Greece
• Ireland
• Italy
• Latvia
• Lithuania
• Luxembourg
• Malta
• The Netherlands
• Portugal
• Slovakia
• Slovenia
• Spain

The seven non-eurozone members of the EU are Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Sweden. These countries continue to use their own national currencies and have not joined the Eurozone, which is a currency union of member states of the European Union that have adopted the Euro as their primary currency and sole legal tender.

All EU countries are part of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), but some have chosen to retain their national currencies and not adopt the Euro. Denmark, for example, has negotiated an opt-out with the Union and kept its former currency.

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