HAS the Paris Mint we speak of “an industrial hazard”, “an anecdotal episode”. On December 1, the European Commission invalidated the design proposed in September 2023 by the public establishment, judging the twelve stars of the European flag on the faces of the 10, 20 and 50 euro cent coins to be too inconspicuous. The problem is that the Pessac factory had taken the lead and its 170 employees had already produced 27 million of its pieces… Deemed non-compliant, they are being denatured and then will be recycled into new pieces. These should be placed on the market by the Banque de France in the spring, although they were expected at the end of 2023.
“There was, at a given moment, the decision to launch production with a risk-taking, because there was no official validation from the European Commission, in order to be able to deliver on time, recognizes the Paris currency from 20 minutes. We had commitments to numismatic marketing of these coins, versions in very high minting quality intended for collectors and expected at the end of the year.” She adds that validation should be a formality and that “these are things that had already been done for the two euro coins, for which we had changed the national faces on the occasion of the twenty years of the euro. » The end of the year for the company was also very busy in terms of production, particularly for the production of foreign currencies.
“Less than 2% of the site’s annual production”
We can imagine the cold shower for the establishment when the European Commission asked to scrap absolutely all the parts. “This is not dead loss but recycling, because the 27 million coins will be 100% recycled,” the Mint of Paris wishes to qualify. “If it is an unfortunate setback, which we could have done without, we put it into perspective on the scale of our annual production (1.4 billion pieces), this represents less than 2%.”
La Monnaie de Paris also wants to say that it reacted very quickly, offering new designs within seventy-two hours. “The validation of the new designs took place on December 21 and the new coins are already in production,” underlined the Monnaie de Paris. As the establishment is an organization entirely financed by its activity, no additional costs will be passed on. “The price paid by the State for the production of these coins remains exactly the same as what was initially planned,” insists the Paris Mint. And its president formally denies having incriminated the responsibility of the State in this affair. The company does not wish to communicate the cost of this failure, but it would vary between 700,000 and 1.2 million euros, according to the Letter.
An evaluation has been launched by the company’s supervisory board to prevent this type of situation from happening again and it is expected to be completed in February. “We are in close contact with the Ministry of the Economy and Finance, with which there is no tension,” says Monnaie de Paris.