0 Euro - Maastricht

The 0 Euro souvenir note program was launched in France in 2016 by Richard Faille, who pitched the concept partly on the observation that tourists routinely keep low-denomination banknotes as keepsakes rather than spending them. By printing notes with a face value of zero, the issuer sidesteps EU regulations governing legal tender while still using genuine security printing — Oberthur Fiduciaire produces these on the same equipment used for circulating currency, including intaglio printing and embedded security threads.

Maastricht's inclusion in the series is historically pointed: the 1992 Treaty of Maastricht is the founding document of the euro itself, making a zero-value euro note commemorating the city a genuinely odd loop of monetary self-reference.