Taking Piss-Taking to a Whole New Level

Belgium Commemorates Waterloo With a Coin, and France Is Not Pleased

LONDON — Perhaps befitting a battle that ended French hegemony in Europe, Paris, it seems, has been outflanked once again.

After it objected to a decision in March by Belgium to introduce a new 2 euro coin to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, the Belgians retreated, scrapping 180,000 coins they had already minted.

But victory for France is proving elusive.

This week, Belgium decided to circumvent French resistance by invoking a little-known European Union rule that allows countries to issue euro coins of their choice, provided they are in an irregular denomination.

That led to the unveiling of a €2.50 coin — a first in Belgium — and 70,000 of them have now been minted. The coins, which can only be spent inside Belgium, display a monument of a lion atop a cone-shaped hill on the site of France’s humiliation, as well as lines indicating where troops were positioned when forces led by Britain and Prussia defeated Napoleon in the countryside near Brussels.

Well, it's an original solution, I guess.

Johan Van Overtveldt, the Belgian finance minister, insisted on Monday that the new coins were not meant to provoke Gallic anger.

Uh huh...

Seems like time for some music, maybe.