Melvin Mangion, from the National Euro Changeover Committee, answers your questions on the euro:

Euro banknotes

Although the euro has been in circulation in 12 European countries for five years, and Slovenia has also recently adopted the new currency, it is easy to take the appearance of the euro notes and coins for granted, especially if we used them during our travels in other European destinations. It is important for each and everyone to become familiar with the euro notes and coins and to seek to be informed!

Unlike the familiar Maltese lira notes, which total four, there are seven euro notes in all. These range from the €5, which is the smallest denomination, to the €500. The range of notes is striking when compared to the Maltese lira.

The very fact that there are three extra notes can be rather overwhelming for someone who is not used to high denomination notes. Maybe an easy way of looking at it is to compare the Maltese lira banknotes to the euro banknotes. The table above shows the values of these two currencies compared to each other.

The table shows how the smaller denomination euro banknotes are similar in value to the existing Maltese lira notes. However, as the value exceeds €50 there are no Maltese lira notes for comparison purposes, and this is where the difficulty may lie. This table should however start creating a mental map of the values of the seven different euro banknotes, especially the higher denomination notes.