marco_polito wrote:

"(...)
2) Guyane Française, Martinique, Guadeloupe, La Réunion, Açores,
Madeira, Canary Islands, Ceuta, Melilla, Penon de Velez de la Gomera,
Penon de Alhucemas and the Chafarinas Islands are the only non
European territories that are part of EU. In order to know which Non-
European areas are part of EU, just look at the map on any Euro
banknote.
(...)"

Yes, you're right for the first seven, but it is a bit difficult to
make them out. The Spanish possessions I can't see, though. Are they
there? Anyway, within Europe no borders are drawn on the banknote.
Malta and Cyprus will have to be added anyway when they ultimately
become euro-users (they will become EU members pretty soon).

Here in the Netherlands there was a bit of a mini-row over the not
showing of some Dutch islands on the banknote. I recall that the
island of Texel was added to the illustration after a complaint (the
island is hardly discernible on the banknote), but there are four
more (inhabited) islands in the north of the Netherlands. And
Terschelling and Ameland (the largest two after Texel) were "not
amused" by not being on the banknote map. They would have been
ridiculously small dots, though.

Maybe depicting a map on a banknote (and post stamp) is not a good
idea...

The story reminds me of another banknote row that has been posted
here some time ago: An Estonian banknote showing an illustration of
the border river between Estonia and Russia at Narva/Ivangorod had a
very dark sky over Russia. Some Russians apparently thought that this
was not a coincidence.

Peter S.

PS For reference, I used a 5 euro note, the smallest one. I'm not
that rich... ;-)))