Duitsland overweegt afschaffen van munten 1 en 2 eurocent (en)

Germany has become the latest member state to consider scrapping the smallest and most fiddly of the euro coins - the one and two cent coins.

"We could imagine such a solution for Germany", Wolfgang Söffner, head of coins and notes department at the German central bank, told Handelsblatt on Tuesday (24 August).

"We're thinking about getting rid of them because of the cost. There are big transport and storage costs that have to be considered", he said.

If the biggest member state were to go ahead and do away with the smallest coins, it would be following in the footsteps of Finland, which has already stopped using them.

The Netherlands is to stop using them from 1 September while Belgium is considering following suit.

Shortage of coins

The main problem with these little coins is that they have become more expensive to produce than their real value because of the rise in the price of steel.

On top of this, because people tend to lose them in bottom of wallets and pockets or simply leave them at home because they are too fiddly to use, there is a shortage of the coins in Germany.

However, talk of scrapping the coins is just at its early stages.

Berlin still has in mind the great protests by Germans against the 'Teuro' - an amalgamation of the German word for expensive and euro - directly after the new currency was introduced in 2002.

They accused retailers of rounding up the prices. These accusations are likely to fly again as some prices are rounded up to the nearest five.

According to AFP, the latest edition of business weekly WirtschaftsWoche contains a poll showing that 54 percent of Germans want to keep the one and two cent coins while 39 would like to see them gone.