The European Central Bank announced plans to redesign euro banknotes and seek the opinion of the public in a process that is expected to lead to a final decision by 2024.

The ECB will select a new design for euro banknotes by 2024 and call on European citizens for their input, the regulator said in a statement published on its official website. Notably, this is going to be the first full redesign of euro banknotes since the introduction of the currency in 1999. Earlier, the regulator only updated anti-counterfeiting features. According to the ECB, the redesign process will start with the creation of focus groups that will be gathering opinions of European citizens on possible themes of future banknotes. All the information gathered will then be submitted to the theme advisory group that will consist of experts from each euro area country. The members of the theme advisory group will be appointed based on proposals from national central banks. People from different fields will also participate in the selection of a new design (historians, architects, mathematicians, photographers, etc.).

"After 20 years, it’s time to review the look of our banknotes to make them more relatable to Europeans of all ages and backgrounds," ECB President Christine Lagarde said.

The redesign process will run in parallel with the creation of the digital euro. According to  Christine Lagarde, the ECB plans to make the digital euro easy and safe to use. In addition, the digital euro will be more environmentally friendly than other cryptocurrencies. “The power used to run tens of thousands of transactions per second is negligible compared with the energy consumption of crypto-assets such as bitcoin,” the regulator emphasized.