Every year, the European Central Bank (ECB) withdraws 376,000 counterfeit euro banknotes from circulation, which in appearance is an excessive number, but in real terms it reports the opposite: counterfeiters live their lowest hours, with an expertise for the trade at historically low levels. The ECB congratulates itself on this and takes the opportunity to boast about how well it manufactures banknotes: counterfeits are “easy to detect due to their poor imitations of security features or lack of them.”
During 2022, 13 counterfeit bills were detected for every million in circulation, which is the lowest figure since the euro existed, only behind that of 2021, when the number stood at 12, according to information from the ECB provided by the Bank of Spain. The European authorities describe this proportion as “exceptionally low”, despite the fact that it increased by 8.4% compared to 2021 due, it says, to the recovery of economic activity after the restrictions of the pandemic.
The annual sequence since the introduction of the euro shows the sharp drop in the circulation of counterfeit banknotes since the beginning of the century. If in 2003 61 bills were withdrawn for every million, the figure barely dropped significantly until the middle of the last decade, when it began to fall below 48. Year after year it has been reduced to 13 today.
Five years ago, in 2017, there were 694,000 counterfeit bills in circulation, a figure that has now been reduced by 45%. If five years ago there were 20,200 million notes of any amount in circulation, now the figure has increased by a similar percentage and amounts to 29,450 million notes.
The question is whether the lower detection of banknotes means that there are fewer counterfeits or, on the contrary, that the counterfeits are now so good that they are not detected. The ECB rejects the second hypothesis by ensuring that “the probability of receiving a counterfeit bill is remote.” “Counterfeits should not be a cause for concern for citizens”, although they should not lower their guard and make an effort to detect them, among other things because paying with one of them can have criminal consequences.
Of the counterfeit bills, two thirds correspond to those of 20 and 50 euros. Only 1.7% are 500 euros, compared to 15.4% of those with 10 and 2.3% of those with 5. 96.6% were detected in euro zone countries, while 2 .7% corresponded to the rest of the EU countries and barely 0.7% to non-EU countries.
To recognize a counterfeit banknote, a method known as “touch, look and turn” is usually used, which is based on a comparison with a conventional banknote or with a series of security elements that are described on the ECB or the ECB web pages. Bank of Spain.
