While the merchants of Northern Ireland are concerned about counterfeit British £1 coins and their local police insisting there is no widespread problem, those European Union nations participating in the euro currency union can rest assured because the number of counterfeit euro coins decreased during 2009.According to the European Commission, the number of counterfeit euro coins detected during calendar year 2009 was 172,100 pieces, down from 195,900 coins detected during 2008. This is a decreased of 12 percent. Great Britain is an EU member nation, however has not chosen to participate in the currency union.
As with any statistics, you have to be careful how you interpret them. The number of counterfeit 2 euro coins decreased by almost 18 percent, however during 2009 the number of bogus 50-cent euro coins increased by nine percent while the number of counterfeit 1 euro coins increased by eight percent. Consider that the 2-euro coin, worth more than $2 US, is still the most widely counterfeited EU coin. The 2 euro is also the highest denomination coin in circulation in the EU.
The EC tried to put these statistics into perspective, releasing a statement reading: “Indeed, the overall number [of counterfeit euro coins] is very small by comparison with the total number of around 15 billion genuine euro coins put into circulation of the three highest denominations, with a resulting ratio of one counterfeit to every 89,000 genuine coins.”
The number of detected counterfeit euro coins in 2009 is also lower than the total number of counterfeit coins detected within all of the nations combined who now participate in the currency union, this statistic being from the final year prior to each country having entered the currency union. There are now officially 16 nations using the common currency.
Despite this success, the EC is being cautious about congratulating itself. In a recently released statement appearing in the Jan. 11 The Sofia Echo newspaper in Bulgaria the commission said, “Although encouraging, there is no room for complacency and efforts to remove counterfeits from circulation should be maintained and intensified.”
The commission has also acknowledged that during 2009 the number of counterfeit euro coins seized outside of the EU increased. The EC, Croatia, Montenegro, and Turkey have established agreements of cooperation regarding counterfeit coins. During the past year police seized about 11,000 bogus euro coins prior to these phony coins being able to reach circulation. This is a similar number to that seized during 2008. No private mints counterfeiting euro coins were reported to have been shut down during 2009.
According to The Sofia Echo article, “Despite these successes, most of the criminal groups responsible for euro coin counterfeiting have not been dismantled yet.”
The EU still has to concern itself with counterfeit bank notes as well. On Jan. 11 the European Central Bank announced about 860,000 counterfeit euro bank notes were withdrawn from circulation during 2009. Of these, 447,000 notes, were withdrawn during the second half of the year, an increase of about 8 percent from the first half of the year. To put these numbers into perspective, there was an average of 12.8 billion genuine euro bank notes in circulation on average at any time during 2009.
Source: numismaster.com
