On the 23rd floor of the European Central Bank’s (ECB) towering Frankfurt headquarters, on the other side of a security door, anti-counterfeiting experts are poring over some of the best fake banknotes in the eurozone.
The room, off limits to outsiders, at first glance recalls a high-school science lab — an unusually well-equipped one.
Lined up on the workbenches are 3D microscopes, ultra-sensitive scales and special devices designed to detect about a dozen of the safety features embedded in genuine euro banknotes — and spot the forgeries.
Photo: AFP
The analysis done by the handful of specialists in the room helps the ECB keep up to date with the latest counterfeiting techniques, and hopefully stay a step ahead.
Twenty years after the launch of the single currency, the risk of a eurozone citizen holding a fake euro note is “very slim,” said Jean-Michel Grimal, head of the ECB Currency Development Division.
The chances have been getting slimmer by the year.
Banknote counterfeiting fell to a historically low level last year, said the ECB, which is responsible for issuing bills, while the central banks of the 19 eurozone nations each produce their own coins.
About 460,000 fake euro bills were last year taken out of circulation, down 18 percent from 2019.
By comparison, there are currently 27 billion genuine euro notes out there.
The safety of euro banknotes has contributed to the “strong trust” eurozone citizens have in the single currency, Grimal said, with surveys putting support for the euro at about 80 percent.
The lab’s biggest treasure is a large iron cabinet that requires two people to open it, each only knowing part of the secret combination.
Inside is a trove of nearly 1,000 fake banknotes that have been studied over the past two decades.
Every eurozone country has its own counterfeiting detection center, but Frankfurt holds the most “interesting” examples because they are considered the best imitations, said Eric Languillat, one of the ECB’s counterfeiting experts.
The analysis done here also helps to give “a quantitative view of the [fake] notes circulating in Europe,” he said.
The findings are shared with police services, such as the EU police agency Europol, to help them track down counterfeiting networks.
The ECB’s research and development (R&D) teams, tasked with constantly improving the quality and security of euro bills, also feed off the lab’s discoveries.
“If we notice the counterfeiters using certain technological methods, the R&D teams will look at what they can put in place to counteract them,” Grimal said.
The ECB’s efforts against tampering come at a price, requiring a sizeable annual budget, but the money spent “is a good investment compared to the cost of a counterfeiting crisis,” Grimal said.
On one computer screen, a genuine 20 euro note is blown up to nearly 70 times its size, revealing the tiny waves inside the “20” figure, resembling the ridges of a ploughed field and quite a challenge to imitate.
Citizens do not necessarily “have the instinct to look closely at notes,” Languillat said.
That is why the ECB has for years encouraged the public to use the “feel, look, tilt” method to check that what they are holding is the real thing — no microscope required.
Special printing ensures no other notes feel like euro notes, holding a bill up to the light reveals the watermark and security thread, while tilting it changes the hologram and color-shifting images.
“If you look carefully at a banknote, the quality of a fake is generally pretty bad — it should be easy to spot,” he said.
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
RSS