Ian Black: Inside Europe

Now that Rupert Murdoch has finally come out against euro membership for Britain, there may simply be no point. But here's a positive thought anyway about the single currency: it can be fun!

The banknotes, it's true, are bland, biliously coloured and faceless. Having 12 different sets of coins in circulation, on the other hand, does make your small change quite interesting. Call me an anorak, even a cagoule, but it was a smart move to put the common symbol on one side and a national image on the flip side of the eight denominations: Ireland's Celtic harp, Italy's Marcus Aurelius, France's Marianne, etc create a satisfying sense of unity and diversity - just what this should have.

Six months since the great E-day changeover, Amsterdam University mathematicians have done some fascinating sums. Using purse-content analysis to track patterns of diffusion, they discovered that one in four euro coins in Belgium is already non-Belgian; in the Netherlands, one in five. In a year's time, half the coins in the Netherlands will be from elsewhere in euroland.

Geographically peripheral Ireland, Portugal and Greece are likely to remain more numismatically homogeneous for longer. So sea-girt Britain in euroland would keep more euro coins bearing the Queen's (or maybe Beckham's) head than Queen Beatrix in the Hague or King Albert in Brussels. The bad news is that because of Germany's sheer size, its coins will eventually dominate the entire eurozone - another reason to fight the whole dastardly scheme on the beaches etc, UK "no" campaigners will say.

Equipped with an elegantly designed eurocollector board (produced, funnily enough, near Maastricht airport, with 96 spaces for every coin apart from limited-edition Vatican City and Monaco), life on the continent has become a dizzying sequence of vigilance, acquisition, bargaining and completion. Visit Luxembourg for an EU meeting and you can come away with a set of Grand Duke Henri coins.

In Strasbourg a lucky colleague found the Finnish 20 cent coin with its heraldic lion design by sculptor Heikki Häiväoja. My daughter's school trip to Normandy netted the missing 50 cent in our French set. It means there's now always something extra to look forward to in the travelling circus of European institutional life. This week's Seville summit should let me complete the Spanish set. Hardline immigration policy in Portugal - at least that's what I've told the Guardian foreign desk - may require a trip to Lisbon to fill in those eight blanks on the board. An Austrian friend has promised to swap the edelweiss for a Greek trireme. Other euro issues like exchange rate stability, European central bank transparency and the budgetary constraints imposed by the stability and growth pact pale into insignificance besides.

Building up expectation is always part of the backdrop to a summit, though suggestions that Seville may raise the walls round Fortress Europe and throw away the key have been exaggerated. However much Tony Blair and José Maria Aznar, the Spanish prime minister, want to talk tough on illegal immigration, effective EU-wide policies on border controls, asylum and burden-sharing will take a long time to forge: by then the current election-induced mood of Albanian squeegee-merchant hysteria may have passed so that greater efforts can be put into minority integration and managed migration. The biggest problem may be getting to Seville at all. Brussels-based journalists have already been forced to fly a day early to avoid the Spanish general strike on the summit's eve. Now an air traffic controllers' stoppage may mean an extended bus or train journey across the continent. But maybe we can go via Monaco and pick up some really rare euro coins.

i.black@guardian.co.uk