20 Euro

The Europa series 20 Euro was introduced in November 2015, the third denomination released in the redesigned series following the 5 and 10. Like all Europa notes, it incorporates a portrait of Europa — the Phoenician princess from Greek mythology — embedded in the watermark and hologram, taken from a 2nd-century BC vessel held in the Louvre. The decision to include a mythological figure rather than any historical European was itself a deliberate political compromise.

The emerald number, introduced across the Europa series, produces a light effect visible to the naked eye and was specifically engineered to defeat the increasingly sophisticated scanning and printing equipment available to counterfeiters by the early 2010s.