PRESS RELEASE
1997-07-08	

The Euro in standards

The first workshop about the new European currency, the Euro, in international and European standards and registries, took place in Iraklion, Crete, on 5 July 1997.

The workshop was arranged by the committee CEN TC304 Character Set Technology (proposed new title: Multilingual Information Infrastructure). It is a strong wish from the European Commission that the European standards organization CEN and its technical committee TC304 coordinate the incorporation of the Euro in standards.

About thirty participants, manufactureres and users from Europe, North America and Asia, attended.

A large number of items were discussed, the main subjects being the currency code and the Euro sign.

Currency code	
EUR	

The registration of a three letter currency code EUR in ISO 4217 was the first subject. This code is needed for interchange of Euro-related information, especially financial transactions. Its proper registration is the most important action and is already underway, but needs to be checked and followed up.

Euro sign  		

The need for and the usage areas for the Euro sign were discussed. Although the three letter currency code will solve the general user needs for information interchange, the European Commission wishes to promote the use of the Euro sign in computers, in order to give it a status similar to the one that the pound sign and the dollar sign have today. Many manufacturers are critical of full-scale implementation of the Euro sign, due to the high costs involved. The possible technical solutions concerning input, output and interchange of the Euro sign were discussed:

The Euro sign, created by the European Commission, is a symbol, or "glyph". This symbol or glyph needs to be entered into international registries. All screen and printing technologies fonts that will include the Euro sign will need their own Euro glyph suiting the design of that particular font. The registration of glyphs takes place at AFII (the Association for Font Information Interchange) by font developers.

The introductions of the Euro sign in 16-bit code tables, in ISO/IEC 10646 and in the Unicode and in the European subsets (MES and EES) of ENV 1973, were all initiated at ISO and CEN meetings during the days before and after the workshop.

The possible introduction in 8-bit codes, like the ISO/IEC 8859-series, and some already decided introductions in manufacturer specific code tables, like Microsoft 1250-1258.

The introduction of the Euro sign will affect keyboard layouts, mainly ISO/IEC 9995 and national keyboard standards.

Other aspects

Several other standards activities, such as sorting, matching and transformation, all handled by CEN TC304, were mentioned.

Other questions about the introduction of the Euro in IT systems were put forward. It was obvious that there is a lack of guidance.

The workshop recommended actions for the standards items and advised that vendor plans be monitored and that the financial world be contacted. The CEN TC304 secretariat assumed the role of contact point. An action plan will soon be made public.

More information is available from CEN TC304:
	Secretariat, ﬁorgeir Sigur›sson (thorgeir@stri.is, phone:+354-570 7159)
	Chairman, Wolf Arfvidson (wolf.arfvidson@statskontoret.se, phone +46-8-454 46 99)
	The world-wide-web site http://www.stri.is/TC304/EURO/