5 lei

Romania's 5 lei denomination has an unusual origin in this series: the 2005 issue was part of the country's redenomination, where 10,000 old lei became 1 new leu. The switch, effective 1 July 2005, was driven by administrative fatigue — Romanians had been routinely handling transactions in the hundreds of millions of old lei, a direct consequence of hyperinflation in the 1990s that peaked around 300% annually in 1997.

Most denominations in the new leu series were issued in polymer by De La Rue, but this 5 lei note was printed on paper rather than the plastic substrate used for the lower values — a deliberate tiered approach to substrate costs that was gradually phased out as polymer production scaled up.