Red-faced European Union bureaucrats have agreed to urgently look at how “euro” is being spelt by some new EU member states from eastern Europe after central bankers noted discrepancies.

European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet raised the issue with Finance Ministers and central bankers from all 25 EU nations at a meeting in Scheveningen, Netherlands.

“The fact that, having a single currency, we have the same spelling ... seems to be frankly natural,” Trichet said on Saturday.

“We have the same bank notes all over Europe ... and it’s important to stick in our view to this decision,” Trichet told reporters.

According to one diplomatic source, the countries concerned were Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovenia, who all joined the EU on May 1. Latvia for example spells euro “eiro”, one official said.

Belgian Finance Minister Didier Reynders said EU lawyers had been asked to address the issue urgently.

“I thought it was clear - E - U - R - O - but in some new member countries it could be spelt a bit differently,” said Dutch Finance Minister Gerrit Zalm, who chaired the meeting.

A similar problem occurred after euro was chosen for the single currency’s name in 1995, when there was debate about how it should be spelt in Greek and what its plural form should be in all EU languages.

The number of official EU languages rose to 20 from 11 with the bloc’s expansion in May.