OPINION OF THE EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK on a proposal for a Council regulation on denominations and technical specifications of euro coins intended for circulation (codification).
While the ECB generally welcomes the codification exercise, it notes that the codification approach does not allow for any substantial change to be made to Regulation (EC) No 975/98. The ECB is however of the opinion that a modification should be made to the technical specifications set out in Annex I to the proposed regulation, as explained in the Annex.
Annex I to the proposed regulation reproduces the table contained in Article 1 of Regulation (EC) No 975/98. In this table, the thickness of the coins is indicated in the third column, with a footnote mentioning that the values relating to thickness are of an indicative nature. While these indicative values may have been the only values that could be laid down in 1998 when the technical specifications of euro coins intended for circulation were adopted for the first time, the ECB recommends that these indicative values are now replaced by the real thickness values of euro coins, which are well known and used as reference value by the mints to produce the coins.