Notes
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My thanks to Teemu Leisti of Helsinki for various corrections.
Europe in Wikimapia.
The Eurasian boundary has been given as the line of the Ural mountains and the Ural river, the Caspian Sea, the crest of the Caucasus, the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, which puts part of Kazakhstan in Europe, and excludes Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and most of Turkey.
A later atlas excludes all of Kazakhstan and includes all of the others named above, and Cyprus. Then it puts the border through the Southern Mediterranean into the Atlantic, south of Madeira, through the Denmark Strait, north of Svalbard, but west of Novaya Zemlya, then on land down the 60° meridian to the Kazakh border. It puts Asia Minor in Europe. But this classification may be only for atlas-indexing, and is not claimed as definitive.
Wikipedia :-
• Europe
• Borders of the continents
• List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Europe
An EU list of European Countries
At Europa, European countries shows "Member states of the EU, Candidate countries, Other European countries". On 2007-09-05, it showed :-According to another source | ||
|---|---|---|
| Albania
Andorra Austria Belarus Belgium Bosnia and Herzegowina Bulgaria Croatia Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Faeroe Islands Finland France Germany |
Gibraltar
Greece Holy See (Vatican City State) Hungary Iceland Ireland Italy Latvia Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macedonia Malta Moldova Monaco |
Netherlands
Norway Poland Portugal Romania Russian Federation San Marino Serbia and Montenegro * Slovakia Slovenia Spain Sweden Switzerland Ukraine United Kingdom |
Not included in that list | ||
| Armenia
Azerbaijan Cyprus |
Georgia
Kazakhstan |
Turkey |
| Channel Islands | Isle of Man | Kosovo |
Subsequent Changes | ||
| June 2006 : Serbia and Montenegro separated | ||
Turkey is at least partly in Europe; the Russian Federation is partly in Europe; Kazakhstan seems to be partly in Europe.
Kaliningrad is a non-contiguous part of European Russia, between Lithuania, Poland, and the Baltic Sea.
Corsica is a part of France; Sardinia and Sicily are parts of Italy; Crete is a part of Greece. Mount Athos is geographically part of Greece.
The village of Seborga, on the Italian Riviera, has claimed independence : Daily Telegraph, 2006-06-13 p.17 and 2010-04-28 p.17.
Read :-
The United Kingdom consists of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; but not the Republic of Ireland.
In that political sense, Great Britain refers to the largest of the British Isles together with the nearby small islands.
Great Britain consists of England, Wales, and Scotland; but not the Isle of Man nor the Channel Islands nor any part of the island of Ireland.
The British Isles consist of Great Britain, the whole of Ireland, and the Isle of Man (between Great Britain and Ireland); but opinions differ about whether the Channel Islands (off the coast of France) are or should be included.
The Channel Islands consist of the Bailiwicks of : (a) Jersey; (b) Guernsey and dependencies (Alderney, Sark, etc.). Chausey is geographically a Channel Island, but is French.
In the island of Ireland, there are four Provinces : Connaught, Leinster, Munster, and Ulster, each divided into counties. Connaught, Leinster, Munster, and three of the counties of Ulster (Cavan Donegal Monaghan) make up the Republic of Ireland. The remaining six counties (Antrim Armagh Down Fermanagh Londonderry Tyrone) of Ulster constitute Northern Ireland and are part of the UK.
The three Crown Dependencies are the Isle of Man, the Bailiwick of Jersey, and the Bailiwick of Guernsey. They are in neither the UK nor the EU.
The British Islands are the British part of the British Isles - the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; the Isle of Man; and the two Bailiwicks, Guernsey and Jersey. The term is used in UK Law (Interpretation Act 1978).
According to Wikipedia :-
Akrotiri and Dhekelia, Anguilla, Bermuda, British Antarctic
Territory, British Indian Ocean Territory, British Virgin Islands,
Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Montserrat, Pitcairn
Islands, Saint Helena (Ascension Island, Tristan da Cunha), South
Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands.
According to the FCO :-
Anguilla, British Antarctic Territory, Bermuda, British Indian Ocean
Territory, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands,
Gibraltar, Montserrat, St Helena and Dependencies (Ascension Island and
Tristan da Cunha), Turk and Caicos Islands, Pitcairn Island, South
Georgia and South Sandwich Islands, Sovereign Base Areas on Cyprus.
I've made a more-or-less reliable list of what the majority realm in the British Isles has been called over the years, in modern English spelling :-
From 1542 to 1800, I believe that Ireland was a Kingdom, with the same Monarch as England / Great Britain.
Most of the dates are uncertain to at least some extent, until the precise terms of the changes are discovered. RSVP.
Berwick-upon-Tweed has tended to be anomalous.
Note : as a matter of practical necessity, non-EU parts of Western Europe comply with many EU regulations.
The initial 6 EEC members were Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, West Germany (1958).
The United Kingdom, with Denmark and Ireland, joined the EC on 1973-01-01, making 9.
Greenland (previously included with Denmark) left in 1979.
Greece joined from 1981.
Portugal and Spain joined in 1986.
East Germany was included by the re-unification of Germany, with effect from 1990-10-03.
Norway declined to join the EEC in 1973 and the EU in 1995 (both by referendum, terms having been negotiated).
Austria, Finland, and Sweden joined in 1995.
The 15 EU members in 2003 were :- Austria, Belgium, Denmark (excluding Greenland and the Faeroes), Finland (including the semi-autonomous Åland Islands), France (which includes Corsica; and including the overseas départements : Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, Réunion), Germany, Greece, the Republic of Ireland, Italy (which includes Sicily and Sardinia), Luxembourg, the Netherlands (excluding the Netherlands Antilles), Portugal (including the Azores and Madeira), Spain (including Ceuta, Melilla, the Balearics and the Canaries), Sweden, the United Kingdom (with Gibraltar; without the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands).
On 2004-05-01, these 10 countries joined the EU : Cyprus (in effect, only Southern), the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia.
On 2007-01-01, these 2 countries joined the EU : Bulgaria, Romania.
On 2013-07-01, Croatia may join the EU.
Candidate countries :-
• Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
• Iceland
• Montenegro
• Turkey
Potential Applicants :-
• Albania
• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Serbia
• Kosovo
See Enlargement of the European Union.
These include :-
UK-linked : the Cayman Islands, Saint Helena, Ascension Island,
the Falklands ...
Others ...
Gibraltar has been "... part of the EU since British accession in 1973."; but is exempt from the customs union and the common agricultural policy.
The Isle of Man, the Channel Islands.
Albania, Andorra, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Kosovo, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Norway, Russian Federation, San Marino, Serbia, Switzerland, Ukraine, the Vatican City State (Holy See), ... any others ?
These need to be correctly placed above :-
The French overseas territories of
French Polynesia, Mayotte, New Caledonia, St.-Pierre-et-Miquelon, and
Wallis and Futuna. ... ?
Not part of geographical Europe, but culturally linked; listed mainly to show that they have not been entirely forgotten. :- Israel ... any others ?
Greenland (left EEC/EU 1979), Israel,
some or all of Kazakhstan, most of Russia, ...
Opinions differ about whether Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and
most of Turkey are in geographical Europe.
Some offshore regions, etc. have special Tax and/or Customs status :- Ålands, Canaries, Livigno (Italy), ...?
I asked : "Has EU been added to ISO 3166 as a country code?" (it would be silly to allow it to be used for anything else).
Markus Kuhn replied that the EU is not yet a country, but the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code EU has been reserved for the EU.
We did not get a new flag with more stars in May 2004; the twelve stars remain as they have always been.
For Summer Time in Europe, and elsewhere, refer to Summer Time.
The Date of Easter Sunday within the EU is undoubtedly given by the Gregorian Rule, as required by the Papal Bull of 1582 and the British Calendar Act of 1751. I gather that there is no EU definition; the EU relies on its member countries.
For public holidays : At Europa, Choosing a time to travel has and links to related information. Information on Public Holidays shows an EC database.
Links to the national web portals of the member states of the European Union can be found at the following web site: Index.
The EFTA comprises Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland.
In Single Market with the EU : free movement of capital, goods, services, and people.
Outside : EU Common Agricultural and Fisheries Policy and others.
The EEA comprises Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein plus EU.
Standards require that the Euro is represented either as € or with its Unicode number, as € (tests : € and € in your browser. In my Win98 MS IE4, only € was recognised; in WinXP sp2 IE6, both were).
The Euro character is more reliably present in the simpler, more common text fonts than on older, rarer, or obscurer ones.
In HTML, Dollar is represented by "$", but Pound by "£" or "£". I have not read of a corresponding small number for the Euro, but the deprecated "€" did work in my MSIE4, giving "€" - font permitting; I've since read of "€", the proper standard, giving "€". Numerically, 8364 = $20AC; as follows (font-dependent). Also, "€" should now work.
| HTML :- | £ | £ | € | € | € | <strike>C</strike> | <del>C</del> |
| You get :- | £ | £ | € | € | € | C | |
| Win98 Ed1 MSIE 4, local |
OK | OK | OK | OK | € | could serve | could serve |
| WinXP sp2 MSIE 6, local |
OK | OK | OK | OK | OK | could serve | could serve |
While the latest standards should be used wherever possible, when using older hardware/software systems it may be necessary to use other methods.
I have read and (using my UK keyboard setup) verified that the Euro Currency Character (like "C"-overprinted-by-"=") is known to Windows 98. It is at position 128, and is typed in by using AltGr-4; Alt-Ctrl-4; keypad Alt-0128. As this "4" key has another alien currency symbol, '$', given by Shift-4, there is a clear risk of using the wrong one; Alt-Gr<anything-but-3-or-4> would have been a wiser choice.
In DOS, #128 (Alt-128) is Upper-case C-cedilla, Ç; in Code Page 437, #238 resembles the Euro sign (it is intended for element of and/or Greek ε (epsilon)).
I have read that the Euro character in Windows 98 with foreign keyboards may be given by some combination of {AltGr/RightAlt} & {4/5/e/u}.
| US | US Int'l | UK | DE | etc. |
| Alt-0128 | AltGr-5 | AltGr-4 | AltGr-E | ? |
In Code Page 1251 (Cyrillic), I hear it's at 136.
A list of possibilities for various PC keyboards included :- AltGr-4, Alt0128, AltGr-E, AltGr-ε, AltGr-5, AltGr-U, Alt0136.
Note that the top bit of characters is not guaranteed to be preserved across all links, including in the Internet; and that #128 would probably transform to #0 or Null, and hence either vanish from sight or act as a string terminator.
Note also that there's not much point in putting it in and transmitting it unless you can also get it out - check the capabilities of your screen(s) and printer(s). It may well be safer to use the triliteral EUR instead.
My Windows 98 fonts Courier New, Times New Roman and Arial had the euro glyph, but many of its other fonts did not - refer to Character Map.
On an up-to-date printer and system, the character should work.
On an old system, try C-backspace-equals :- Write('C'^H'= ', Money) ; .
One can also try C-backspace-minus or -dash, to get something like C.
The Turnpike 4.00 news/mail program, which I used earlier, accepts the #128 character when editing, but denies that it can send it by E-mail - maybe there should be a convention for representing it, perhaps "C=", in news/mail where one wants to distinguish it from "EUR". It sends it to News, and receives it as a byte value 128 = $80; but shows it as a block. Turnpike 6.05 seems content with it.
1999-01-14 : I have a new UK keyboard; it has a Euro symbol engraved in the Alt-Gr position of the "4" key in the top row.
1999-01-24 : Reported that a new US/CA keyboard does not show the Euro symbol; not known what its Ctrl-Alt-4 does with the OS in use.
1999-08-03 : I'm told that Windows NT 4.0 (SP4 & up), US keyboard, only(?) Alt-0128 works - if I've interpreted the message aright.
I am told that ISO-8859-15 is relevant.
"In iso-8859-15, the Euro is character 0xA4 (164 decimal)".
Ian Bell wrote that :- The character code for the Euro is actually 0x20AC in iso-10646 (UTF-8 is an 8bit encoding of the 32bit character set, iso-10646). It gets encoded into three bytes (0xE2, 0x82, 0xAC, or in quoted-printable, =E2=82=AC). In the various Windows character sets it is 0x80 (128). In iso-8859-15 it is 0xA4 (164).
Links for ZIPs of (PDFs of?) ISO/IEC 10646 and others are in ISOTC Freely Available Standards.
The standard with the 3-letter codes for currencies is ISO 4217. See, for example, ISO 4217 Currency names and code elements at ISO.
I asked :- "The (US) $ can be represented as USD, the £ as GBP (or UKP); is there a similar standard for the Euro?"
Roger Barnett replied :- "Yes, EUR (now included in the ISO list of such abbreviations). The EC definition of the Euro symbol (essentially a "C" character with two horizontal lines drawn through it) includes details of the colour codes required to get it to print in the correct day-glow yellow."
Dave Mayall asked :- "Does anyone know the ISO currency code for the Euro?"
Richard G replied :-
"The International Standards Organisation (ISO) adopted the currency code
'EUR' for the euro on 21 April 1997 with immediate effect.
The euro character allocation to code U+20AC was accepted by the Unicode
Technical Committee on 29 May 1997 and is awaiting ISO confirmation. Source."
(FNF)
David Marshall then wrote :-
"I should possibly point out that this is different to the "European
Currency" symbol found at U+20A0 which will remain in use for the ECU."
I've since heard that U+20A0 was added by accident, and should
not be used.
Dave Mayall then wrote :- "The current ECU is allocated XEU, and other EU currency transactions are denominated in XE* series units."
An official Euro website contained :-
Q : "Is there an official decimal 'delimiter' (fullstop or comma)
between euro and cent?"
A : "There is no European rule on this. National rules and practices
determine whether they use a fullstop or a comma."
There is thus a possibility of confusion, and a greater one if thousands separators (dot or comma or space) are used, especially in comma-separated lists.
I've seen a suggestion that the Netherlands might use a trailing minus sign for negative amounts.
See in Wikipedia etc.
It is always important to check, carefully, for any and all applicable rules of calculation, whether from government or business sources.
It is generally unwise to use floating-point variables for accounting-type work, where exact results are expected. Use fixed-point types such as integer, word, or (Delphi) currency.
The use of the Euro in accounting started on 1999-01-01.
There are specific rules about precision and rounding which are mandatory in currency conversions to/from/through the Euro; conversion between two national currencies must go via the Euro - "triangulation". Six-figure rates are mandatory, if I remember correctly. One should seek an authoritative reference for these. If you follow the links on this page, you may be lucky - P O'B's EMU FAQ currently has rates and conversion rules.
From a book, the authority is the "Article 235 Regulation".
To convert from one national currency to another, it seems to say :-
• Convert to euro, using rate to 6 figures
• Use at least three decimals in the euro figure
• Convert from euro, using rate to 6 figures
The rates are expressed as 1 euro = 6-fig number of national units;
in effect, 1 euro = ddddddE-d national units.
See in Wikipedia.
The rates are not guaranteed, but are probably correct for the 2002 euro-joiners (two newspapers and a FAQ agreed) :-
| EU Euro | One Euro = | Euro adopted as official currency | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Austria | ATS | 13.7603 | schillings | 2002-01-01 Tue |
| Belgium | BEF | 40.3399 | francs | 2002-01-01 Tue |
| Cyprus (S) | CYP | 0.585274 | C. pounds | 2008-01-01 Tue |
| Estonia | EEK | 15.6466 | kroon(s) | 2011-01-01 Sat |
| Finland | FIM | 5.94573 | markka | 2002-01-01 Tue |
| France | FRF | 6.55957 | francs | 2002-01-01 Tue |
| Germany | DEM | 1.95583 | marks | 2002-01-01 Tue |
| Greece | GRD | 340.750 | drachmas | 2002-01-01 Tue |
| Ireland | IEP | 0.787564 | punts | 2002-01-01 Tue |
| Italy | ITL | 1936.27 | lire | 2002-01-01 Tue |
| Luxembourg | LUF | 40.3399 | francs | 2002-01-01 Tue |
| Malta | MTL | 0.429300 | Maltese lira | 2008-01-01 Tue |
| Netherlands | NLG | 2.20371 | guilders | 2002-01-01 Tue |
| Portugal | PTE | 200.482 | escudos | 2002-01-01 Tue |
| Slovakia | SKK | 30.1260 | Slovak koruna | 2009-01-09 Mon |
| Slovenia | SIT | 239.640 | tolar | 2007-01-01 Mon |
| Spain | ESP | 166.386 | pesetas | 2002-01-01 Tue |
| Non-EU Euro : | . | |||
| Andorra | . | . | . | ≤ mid 2004 |
| Kosovo | . | . | . | ≤ mid 2004 |
| Mayotte | . | . | . | ≤ mid 2004 ? |
| Monaco | . | . | . | ≤ mid 2004 |
| Montenegro | . | . | . | ≤ mid 2004 |
| San Marino | . | . | . | ≤ mid 2004 |
| St Pierre & Miquelon | . | . | . | ≤ mid 2004 ? |
| Vatican City | . | . | . | ≤ mid 2004 |
| EU Non-Euro : | . | |||
| Bulgaria | BGN | . | Lev | . |
| Czech Republic | CZK | . | Czech koruna | . |
| Denmark | DKK | . | kroner | . |
| Hungary | HUF | . | forint | . |
| Latvia | LVL | . | Latvian lats | . |
| Lithuania | LTL | 3.4528 | Lithuanian litas | Pegged by Dec 2004 |
| Poland | PLN | . | zloty | . |
| Romania | RON | . | Romanian leu | . |
| Sweden | SEK | . | kronor | . |
| UK, Gibraltar | GBP | . | pounds | . |
| Non-EU non-Euro : | . | |||
| Albania | ALL | . | Lek | . |
| Channel Islands | MKD | . | Pound Sterling | Par with UK |
| Croatia | HRK | . | Kuna | . |
| Faeroes | DKK | . | Danish kroner | . |
| Greenland | DKK | . | Danish kroner | . |
| Iceland | ISK | . | Icelandic króna | . |
| Isle of Man | GBP | . | Pound Sterling | Par with UK |
| Macedonia | MKD | . | Macedonian denar | . |
| Norway | NOK | . | Norwegian krone | . |
| Serbia | RSD | . | Serbian dinar | . |
| Switzerland | CHF | . | Swiss franc | . |
| Turkey | TRY | . | Turkish lira | . |
All EU members should be included, and maybe all Euro users; but not necessarily all European countries.
The Pound Sterling symbol, £ = £, is in HTML £ or &163; and in Unicode is U+00A3.
From the Sunday Telegraph, 2006-05-28, p.27 :- The Rouble is to have a new character, form not yet determined. Unicode status?
Many of these pages date from about 2002 :-