Italy €5 (2013)

Small crease at bottom-left corner.

Serial number has two characters as it prefixes: SC

Printer: S002A4 for Banca d'Italia

Europa Series

The ECB intends to redesign the notes every seven or eight years and a new series, called "the Europa series", is being released gradually, note by note from January 2013, with the first notes entering circulation in May 2013. The new series include slight changes, notably the inclusion of the face of the mythological princess Europa in the watermark and in the hologram stripe. New production and anti-counterfeiting techniques will be employed on the new notes, but the design will be of the same theme and colours as the current series, which are bridges and arches. The new notes will nonetheless be recognisable as a new series.

The new notes will also reflect the expansion of the European Union; the current issues do not include the recent members Cyprus and Malta (Cyprus is off the map to the east and Malta was too small to be depicted.)

It will be the first time when the Bulgarian Cyrillic alphabet is to feature on the banknotes as a result of Bulgaria joining the European Union in 2007. Therefore, the new series of Euro banknotes will include "EBPO", which is the Bulgarian spelling for EURO as well as the abbreviation "ЕЦБ" (short for Европейска централна банка in Bulgarian.) The new banknotes will also feature the Maltese abbreviation EĊB (Bank Ċentrali Ewropew).

The full design of the Europa series 5 euro banknote was revealed on 10 January 2013 in the Archaeological Museum of Frankfurt (Germany). The new note is in circulation from 2 May 2013. The old series will gradually be withdrawn. The ECB will announce in due course when the old notes will lose their legal tender status. However, they will not lose their value and it will be possible to exchange them for new notes at Eurosystem central banks indefinitely.

The modified 5 euro note features the initials of the European Central Bank in each of the contemporary EU member languages in a column on the left-hand side of the obverse. The word "euro" in Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic lettering has also been moved to a more central position.

Serial Numbers

In the new series, there are two codes, like in the first series. They are the printer code in the top right hand corner and the serial number. Part of the serial number is horizontal and part of it is vertical. The serial number begins with a letter indicating the printer, which is broadly similar to the first series (Z for Belgium, Y for Greece, etc.). The second letter of the new serial numbers is part of the serial number itself, and has no further significance.

However, as the code indicates the printer, rather than the issuing NCB, certain letters have been reassigned from NCBs which do not maintain their own printing facilities. In the first series, H denoted Slovenia. As there is no Slovene printer of euro banknotes, H represents De La Rue (Loughton) in the second series. Several of the printers which replaced what were NCB codes maintain their printing code from the first series (De La Rue, mentioned, and Bundesdruckerei, which replaced Luxembourg as R, its previous printing code).