“Biontech founders should use the new Eurobonds”
Özlem Türeci (left) and Uğur Şahin received billions from their company’s coronavirus vaccine
Source: Martin UK Lengemann / WELT
Ugur Şahin and Özlem Turesi saved many lives with their vaccine. The MEP wants to see the faces of the couple on the new Eurobonds. However, the ECB must also consider sensitivities in the design process.
WLGur Sahin and Ozlim Torrisi, founders of Biontech, made $1 billion from their company’s coronavirus vaccine. They already got the money, but now they can get the money too. The European Parliament has called on the European Central Bank (ECB) to offer the company’s founders one of their new euro banknotes.
“Important European figures such as the founding spouses of Biontech, Ugur Şahin and Özlem Turise, should be printed on the new Eurobonds,” says Moritz Körner, a member of the Free Democratic Party in the European Parliament. “Your work has saved the lives of millions of Europeans. Her life journey is a fascinating story of integration, progress, entrepreneurship, scientific excellence and the potential of an open immigration community.”
The background to the request is the redesign of the euro banknote. On January 1, 2001, European cash became the official currency of the Eurozone. On that day, citizens held new papers in their hands for the first time. 20th birthday euroThe European Central Bank uses banknotes and coins as an opportunity to redesign banknotes.
However, deciding what the new notes should look like will take a long time. First of all, pollsters across the eurozone have to survey citizens to find potential subjects for banknotes. A carefully balanced advisory group, in which each of the 19 euro countries is represented by an expert, should choose possible topics.
The group consists mainly of professors, from archaeologists to materials physicists. Lisa Burgenheimer, Professor of Information Design, joined the panel from Germany. The board of directors is scheduled to make the decision, possibly in 2024. Then the date for the issuance of the new banknotes must also be decided. Until then, far fewer people are likely to use cash than they do today.
Whether this intensive process will really mean that the founders of Biontech will appear on the 10 or 50 euro banknotes in the future is a different question entirely. As more than 342 million Eurozone residents pay with banknotes and these are valid from Lapland to the French Overseas Territories of Guadeloupe and Martinique, the ECB is careful not to violate any national sensitivities by designing cash or to restrict certain member states’ preference.
This is also the background to the balanced decision-making process in the redesign. The result of such efforts to reach consensus can be evaluated on the observations that are currently valid: able to receive majority, cerebral and eventually perhaps a bit bland. The windows, gates, and bridges on the banknotes are intended to illustrate typical architectural styles from eras of European cultural history such as Romanesque and Baroque. However, the buildings shown are perfect and not really there.
