Paris Mint CEO Mark Schwartz issued an order in November to redesign and mint the country's 10, 20 and 50 cent coins. The new coins will be presented to French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire during a trip to the mint headquarters in Paris on December 7.
The plans were ready, invitations were sent, but instead of waiting for the mandatory approval of the European Commission, Schwarz went ahead with the minting. EU law allows eurozone members to redesign the “national” side of their euro coins every 15 years, but the designs require approval from the European Commission, as well as other eurozone governments, which have one week to voice any objections.
Just six days before the new coins were scheduled to go live, the design was rejected, saddled the Paris Mint with costs ranging from $768,000 to $1.6 million to melt down and re-mint the coins. According to La Littre, Schwartz said there had been a postponement beyond his control, and placed responsibility for the costly incident on the “French state.”
The French Ministry of Economy announced an assessment to understand what happened.
In a statement on Friday, the Mint said that after proposing a draft design in September 2023, the Monnaie de Paris requested approval of the design “in accordance with current procedures.”
“Due to non-compressible production schedules, the Paris Mint has begun production of the new coins to ensure distribution of the new standard coins at the beginning of 2024, as initially announced,” the mint said. The 27 million coins with the rejected design represent less than 2% of the Mint's annual production, for a total of 1.4 billion coins in 2023.
