Brussels has been accused of "political geography" after EU member states left Turkey out of the map aimed at representing larger Europe on a new euro coin design.

Initially, the European Commission had proposed to change the map of Europe currently seen on the ten-cent to two-euro coins into a larger one going east to the Caspian Sea and including Turkey, the Financial Times wrote on Tuesday.

But while it does go further East and includes part of Russia, the map on the "new" euro does not include Turkey.

Judging it "pointless" to comment on that precise point, the commission did not deny that "the design that has been adopted is not exactly the one the commission has proposed".

"The idea was to have a new design that would be a more stylised design, rather than a true geographical representation of Europe, which admittedly is more difficult to represent on such a small surface", commission spokesperson Amelia Torres said, as cited by EUobserver.

But some see the removal of Turkey from the new euro coin as politically motivated.

"The council [the member states' body] has deliberately and secretly wiped Turkey from the new face of the euro", said Marco Cappato and Marco Pannella, Italian Liberal MEPs, in a statement.

"Dictatorships, such as Belarus" do figure on the new euro coins' map, but not "a democratic country like Turkey with whom accession talks are ongoing", they said.

Current euro coins use an accurate map based graphic to depict the 15 countries that were EU members in 1999, before the Union grew to its current 27 members.

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