23/10/2001 (Agence Europe) - According to a survey conducted by the Swiss bank Pictet and taken up by "Les Echos", the three countries where the changeover to the euro will probably be easiest are, in order, Portugal, France and Belgium. Then come Spain, Finland, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria. The changeover for the Italians, Greek and Irish, on the other hand, may be more laborious. According to this survey, the ideal situation is that where inhabitants do not use banknotes much in very dense banking networks, and the most delicate areas are those where the population use a large number of banknotes in a broadly spread banking network. Thus, the high classification of France and Portugal comes essentially from the fact that consumers in these countries use the least number of banknotes and coins in Europe: the number of banknotes in circulation will be 25 in France and 27 in Portugal on average per head of population. Finland, with 16 banknotes on average per person, could have belonged to the leading group of countries, but its banking network is one of the most saturated in the euro zone, with close to 1,320 inhabitants per branch and 234 people on average per automatic holes in the wall.