SCOTT SIMON, host:
This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I'm Scott Simon.
Turkey wants to join the European Union. But this week, the country that famously strides two continents was chagrined when the design for the new Euro coin was introduced. It shows a map of Europe sans Turkey, as the French might put it. The European Commission had proposed the coin design that would include Turkey and other countries bordering Europe. But some European Council members opposed to Turkey's future membership seemed to have prevailed.
This irritates Marco Cappato and Marco Panella, European parliament members from Italy, who said, clearly the council is not embarrassed that the new map should include, as well as Ukraine and Moldova, some dictatorships such as Belarus or authoritarian ones like Russia but it refuses to feature a democratic country like Turkey. Actually, French designers were in charged, I'm surprised that Great Britain made it onto the coin. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
