For the purpose of this Regulation:

“participating Member States” shall mean the Member States listed in the table in the Annex;

“legal instruments” shall mean legislative and statutory provisions, acts of administration, judicial decisions, contracts, unilateral legal acts, payment instruments other than banknotes and coins, and other instruments with legal effect;

“conversion rate” shall mean the irrevocably fixed conversion rate adopted for the currency of each participating Member State by the Council in accordance with the first sentence of Article 123(4) of the Treaty or with paragraph 5 of that Article;

“euro adoption date” shall mean either the date on which the respective Member State enters the third stage under Article 121(3) of the Treaty or the date on which the abrogation of the respective Member State’s derogation under Article 122(2) of the Treaty enters into force, as the case may be;

“cash changeover date” shall mean the date on which euro banknotes and coins acquire the status of legal tender in a given participating Member State;

“euro unit” shall mean the currency unit as referred to in the second sentence of Article 2;

“national currency units” shall mean the units of the currency of a participating Member State, as those units are defined on the day before the adoption of the euro in that Member State;

“transitional period” shall mean a period of three years at the most beginning at 00.00 hours on the euro adoption date and ending at 00.00 hours on the cash changeover date;

“phasing-out period” shall mean a period of one year at the most beginning on the euro adoption date, which can only apply to Member States where the euro adoption date and the cash changeover date fall on the same day;

“redenominate” shall mean changing the unit in which the amount of outstanding debt is stated from a national currency unit to the euro unit, but which does not have through the act of redenomination the effect of altering any other term of the debt, this being a matter subject to relevant national law;

“credit institutions” shall mean credit institutions as defined in Article 1(1) of Directive 2000/12/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 March 2000 relating to the taking up and pursuit of the business of credit institutions ( *1 ) . For the purpose of this Regulation, the institutions listed in Article 2(3) of that Directive with the exception of post office giro institutions shall not be considered as credit institutions.

( *1 ) OJ L 126, 26.5.2000, p. 1 . Directive as last amended by Directive 2005/1/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council ( OJ L 79, 24.3.2005, p. 9 ).’;"

the following Article shall be inserted:

COUNCIL REGULATION (EC) No 2169/2005 of 21 December 2005 amending Regulation (EC) No 974/98 on the introduction of the euro ANNEX ‘ANNEX