Poor old Montenegrins, left in a holding pattern for a few anxious days while Bulgaria argued with the Europowers-that-be about how to spell the word “euro” in the document this country was asked to sign to consent to Montenegro’s EU Stabilisation and Association Agreement.
European rules about the currency require that however it is spelt, the resulting pronunciation should be “euro”. (One may dwell on the inconsistencies in some languages, perhaps most notably English, between spelling and pronunciation, but that is by the by).
The Bulgarians, however, leapt into the trenches, clinging tenaciously to “evro” (евро) in accordance with Cyrillic script. The European Commission refused to budge, citing the rules. In the end, what was not quite a Balkan war but just a Balkan skirmish was brought to an armistice when it was agreed to use the international currency code abbreviation EUR in the Bulgarian version of the document. Technically in itself a breach of that “unbreakable” rule, especially considered that it is not really possible, or even desirable or easy on the ear to try to pronounce EUR, which is only likely to come out as the kind of sound that may be emitted on the morning after far too much rakiya. European officials are as averse to unwanted precedents as they are to hangovers, and so it was agreed that the EUR episode would not be a precedent.
Some commentators interpreted the war of word as evidence that Bulgaria, in its 10th month of membership of the European Union, was showing muscle. Well, certainly the energies of more than one Cabinet minister were, for a few days, devoted seemingly exclusively to the matter. Perhaps afterwards those involved could have got together and compared notes about against whom it is more noble to take up arms, European officials or the teachers’ unions. It turned out that compromise was easier achieved in the former case, but perhaps that was because the fight was about how to name the denomination of a currency, rather than how much currency one should be handing out.
Questions of national pride and national sovereignty aside, to say nothing of the conventions of language and the reasonably important fact that the Bulgarian language already has a pronunciation, transliteration and spelling for the word “evro”, there is some merit for arguing that the notion of a European union and a common currency would seem to suggest a common pronunciation. It seems no bad thing for people in the European currency zone to be at least mutually comprehensible when it comes to the name of the money, if nothing else. Which is more important: The European Ideal to which Bulgarian authorities paid so much lip service in the pursuit of EU accession, or the concept that Bulgaria brings with and retains its own national identity, including on matters of the national language, even after accession?
Further, no matter what name is applied to anything, speakers of other languages come up with their own versions, spellings and pronunciations – as English-speakers, notably, do with the names of, among others, the capital cities of Italy, France and Russia.
There is the question of what may happen should the euro “go global” and expand further into territories where other alphabets and significantly diverse languages are used. Will the day come when the notes will have to contain a series of alternative spellings?
Perhaps the answer would be the simply put the symbol € on the notes, and be done with it. Perhaps a suitable compromise would be to allow everyone to refer to it, in their own language, as The Currency Formerly Known As Euro.
Or perhaps the leaders of the EU and its constituent countries should devote their days to dealing with issues that are somewhat more pressing.
