De Raad maakt euro muntstukken veiliger tegen vervalsing (en)

The Council i makes euro coins safer for the users.

The Council today adopted a regulation aimed at ensuring a uniform protection of euro coins throughout the euro area (38/10). This follows a first-reading agreement with the European Parliament i.

The new regulation sets up in a legally binding form a common method for verifying that euro coins are authentic and fit for circulation. It complements regulation 1338/2001 which requires credit institutions and other payment service providers to ensure that euro notes and coins which they have received and which they intend to put back into circulation are checked for authenticity and that counterfeits are detected. Counterfeiting of euro coins is considered as a significant threat, particularly for the highest coin denominations.

The new regulation obliges credit institutions to ensure that euro coin authentication is carried out by means of coin processing equipment capable of detecting counterfeits, or manually. They may only use the types of coin-processing machines that have successfully passed a detection text carried out by the competent national authority.

Member states will also be obliged to remove from circulation not only counterfeits but also those genuine euro coins that have become unfit due to long circulation or accident or any other reason. Member states may refuse reimbursement of euro coins unfit for circulation which have been altered either deliberately or by a process that could be reasonably expected to have the effect of altering them.

Until now, euro coin authentication has been based on the practices established by a Commission recommendation. The lack of a mandatory common framework for coin authentication constituted, however, in some member an impediment for the institutions concerned to actively look for counterfeits.