The charity which owns the statue celebrating Europe’s single currency complains it spends so much money on repairs, it can no longer afford to deliver the anti-racism and pro-Euro education in schools it wants to.
The most visible and famous single symbol associated with the Euro single currency, the European project and possibly the European Union itself is to be sold at auction after its present owners came to find it too much of a burden. Standing outside the one-time headquarters of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, the 46-foot, 50-ton illuminated Euro-Skulptur has graced countless news reports about the European Union since it was inaugurated in 2001 as convenient shorthand for the bloc’s single greatest project, a single European currency.
Yet the statue has been repeatedly vandalised in recent years, to the extent that its owner can no longer afford to keep it in a “safe condition”, so reports Euronews.
Frankfurt-based charity Frankfurter Kultur Komitee (FraKK) who were given the piece by artist Ottmar Hörl is now placing the piece up for sale, with an auction coming in October.
The report notes how FraKK have tried to solicit additional funding to help keep the statue up — the European Central Bank has already given €15,000, it is said — have failed and repairs have run down their ability to fulfill the charity’s other goals. Euronews reported:
…FraKK said financing from private sponsors was “no longer sufficient” for the 50-tonne steel sculpture to be kept in a “safe condition”.
They also pointed to increasing vandalism over the last two years, which had “used up” the association’s finances, forcing it to curtail other activities aimed at tackling racism and promoting the euro in schools.
Why anyone would want to vandalise an artwork celebrating the European Union’s single currency which plunged millions of Europeans in poorer nations in the south of the continent into a spiral of poverty is obviously a mystery.
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