Yes, the motifs were selected ~1.5y ago: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2025/html/ecb.pr2501...
As an Austrian, it feels a bit annoying that the Germans got their one famous composer - they're kind of our thing! Why not Mozart, Strauss, Haydn, Schubert?
It's also unfortunate that the nice peaceful bird motif was paired with the ugly modern buildings on the other side.
Offensively dull. One shudders to think about the endless bickering that went in to this.
May I propose 6 shades of off-white adorned with geometric shapes. €5 gets dots, €10 lines, €20 triangles and so on. €100 may have pentagrams instead of pentagons to keep Twitter on its toes.