The overwhelmingly glitch-free launch of euro notes and coins won widespread plaudits this morning as millions of Europeans returned to work after the New Year holiday in the first major test of the new currency.
Financial markets saluted what Spain's
El Pais
daily called the watchmaker's precision of the rollout of the new money by marking the euro up more than one percent against the dollar, yen and the British pound, which remains outside the euro area.
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Early morning travellers faced some delays, however, due to the unfamiliarity of the new coinage, launched simultaneously in 12 European Union countries that are home to more than 300 million citizens from midnight on January 1st. But even scattered banking strikes in France and Italy and a Greek bank robbery seemed unlikely to cause major disruption.
Long tailbacks were reported at motorway toll gates around Rome and outside Paris as motorists returning from their New Year break struggled with change.
Commuters using public transport faced fewer delays. Ticket machines accepted both euros and old national currency in Madrid, Antwerp, Paris and Lisbon, but it was euros only in Milan, Italy's financial capital.
The lira, mark, guilder and nine other currencies will be phased out by the end of February but the EU's executive, the European Commission, forecasts that more than half of all transactions in the euro area will be taking place in the new money by the end of this week.
Euro without a hitch, declared France's Liberation daily on its front page. The euro survives its baptism of fire, agreed business daily Les Echos.
Germany's mass circulation Bild, once a standard bearer of Deutschemark patriotism, enthused: "We are sharing this feeling of a euro birth with 300 million Europeans. Forget yesterday. Look bravely to tomorrow. Let's all start afresh!"
Most shops and businesses had been closed on the day itself, so people from the Arctic to the Mediterranean only got their first real chance to try out the new money today.
Commercial bank workers in France and central bank staff in Italy are staging one-day strikes today but officials forecast little disruption to the euro rollout.
Worries that the appearance of the new currency could spark a crime wave proved largely unfounded.
But a gunman in an Athens suburb was among the first to cash in, bagging 100,000 day-old euros as well as 1.5 million drachmas (worth 4,402 euros) when he held up a Post Office Savings Bank this morning.