The euro is the currency adopted by some countries in Europe since 2002. The symbol that represents the euro was developed by the European Commission and it is inspired in the letter epsilon of the Greek alphabet. They have chosen that symbol as a reference to the initial of Europe and the other two parallel lines mean the stability in the euro zone. The official international abbreviation for the euro is EUR and has been registered at the International Organization of Normalization (ISO).
In July 2002, the euro exceeded for the first time the exchange rate with the American dollar, since then it has been in a similar situation. In Dicember 2006, the euro took the place of the dollar as the most used currency for cash payments, during that month around 614.000 million of euros were circulating in the world, while dollars were about 588.000 millions in euros.
There are also some states that help the use of the euro, as they don’t agree with the politics of the United States in issues as economy or international diplomacy, and that in many cases, does not mean having a pro-european position, but an antiAmerican. Iraq for example, before being attacked by the United States, exchanged its dollars to euros. Some social sectors saw in this exchange one of the reasons why Bush intervened Iraq to recover dollar and avoid the Organization of Crude Exporters Countries change its currency to euro, as if that happened the consecuences could be very bad for the United States.