The European Union’s executive arm, the Commission (EC), wants to allow member states to use a new weapon in the fight against fake euros: fake euros.

In an announcement made on Tuesday, the EC proposed a series of laws aimed at strengthening the authorities in the fight against forgery. The keystone of the package was a law obliging banks to check for fake euro coins and notes themselves.

But to make sure those checks are effective, the EC proposed a second law allowing banks to transport fake coins and notes themselves, so that their checking machines can learn to tell good money from bad.

Every time a new type of fake is found, the checking machines need to learn how to identify it, an EC spokesman told Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa.

But at present, the transport and distribution of fake money is regarded as a crime. That could pose a problem for financial institutions wanting to send samples of newly-discovered fakes to a testing centre, the spokesman confirmed.

“The proposal means that they would be legally covered: the authorities could transport the fake money without theoretically falling into a legal trap,” he said.

According to figures released on Tuesday, some 164,000 fake euro coins were identified and withdrawn from circulation last year. An estimated 69 billion genuine coins are in circulation in the 13 countries which use the European currency. dpa bn sc

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