Of the “sources of daily inspiration for everyone”. The Paris Mint the revealedWednesday March 6, the new faces of the 10, 20 and 50 centime coins which will be decorated with the chiseled profile of “three exceptional women” : Simone Veil, Joséphine Baker and Marie Curie. The new coins will gradually be put into circulation by this summer, said the institution responsible for minting the French currency.
At the center of the new coins, designed by the general engraver of the Paris Mint, Joaquin Jimenez, the faces of these three women – who are part of the seven who rest in the Pantheon –, engraved with their names, look in the same direction as a sower, a symbol appearing on French coins for one hundred and twenty years, placed in the foreground.
“The three personalities selected to appear on these coins are the symbol of a strong attachment to the values of the Republic and a source of daily inspiration for all”declared Marc Schwartz, CEO of Monnaie de Paris, quoted in a press release.
Change every fifteen years
Each minted euro coin has a European side, the reverse, and a national side, the face, which can only be changed every fifteen years. The French side of the 1 and 2 euro coins was renewed on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the euro. Old parts will remain usable.
Auschwitz survivor, figure in European politics and the fight for women’s rights, Simone Veil, entered the Pantheon on 1is July 2018, will be the face of the 10 centime coins, detailed the Paris Mint, two days after the inclusion of the freedom to have recourse to a voluntary termination of pregnancy (IVG) in the Constitution.
“My mother would have said “history has shown us that universal brotherhood must be learned, whereas it should be natural”; I am proud that today she embodies our republican values”, welcomed in the press release Brian Bouillon Baker, son of the artist, resistance fighter and feminist and anti-racist activist Joséphine Baker. She is the first black woman to be entered into the Pantheon, in 2021. Her profile will appear on the 20 cent coins.
The French scientist, twice Nobel Prize winner, Marie Curie had already appeared on the last 500 franc note and several collector’s coins before becoming the new face of the 50 centime coins. She is the first woman to be entered into the Pantheon for recognition of her personal work, in 1995.