One currency, one charger: How the EU changed life for consu...

(FILES) This illustration picture taken on 3 August 2023 in Frankfurt am Main, western Germany, shows a twenty-cent coin of Europe's Euro currency. With Europeans heading to the polls on June 9 for the EU-wide parliament elections, AFP takes a look at how the bloc has changed life for consumers: The Deutsche mark, the franc, the Italian lira and the peseta are distant memories. Two decades ago, countries began to ditch their national currencies to adopt the euro. Today, 20 of the European Union's 27 members use the euro as their sole legal tender. Money transfers can now be made without fees between eurozone countries while travellers no longer have to worry about foreign exchange rates. The euro has even gained acceptance in Germany, Europe's biggest economy, whose citizens had initially feared the currency would cause prices to rise. Germans nicknamed the euro the "teuro" -- a p...