France wins battle to prevent new EU coin commemorating Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo

Two hundred years after Napoleon's ambitions to rule Europe died at Waterloo, France has won a small battle to prevent the minting of a euro coin commemorating the event.

Belgium on Wednesday withdrew a proposal to strike a special €2 piece in honour of the Anglo-Dutch-German victory outside Brussels on June 18, 1815, an EU official said, averting an EU ministerial vote after Paris objected on the grounds that glorifying a time of conflict ran counter to efforts to foster European unity.

There was no immediate comment from France, which last year struck a commemorative €2 coin marking the 70th anniversary of the Normandy landings that helped end Nazi German hegemony.

Belgium, which as a state emerged from Dutch rule a decade after Napoleon's death, is preparing to celebrate Waterloo with a weekend of festivities and re-enactments of one of history's decisive combats and expects many more visitors to the battlefield near Brussels, where facilities are being renovated.

The 19 countries using the euro, a common currency intended to cement cohesion after centuries of conflict in Europe, use their own national design on one side of the coins. They may also mint special editions of the largest, the €2 coin, but these designs must be approved by a council of EU ministers.

Those approved this year include a German coin marking 25 years of reunification, a French commemoration of 70 years of peace since the second world war and Finland's memorial to composer Jean Sibelius, born in 1865. Euro notes allow no national distinction and show bridges, windows and doorways to symbolise openness and unity.