Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-05-02-Speech-3-162"
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"en.20010502.11.3-162"2
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"Mr President, in order to protect the euro against counterfeiting, we are looking this evening at a series of technical measures which, however interesting they may be, will not solve the problem. In fact, they even dispose of a crucial problem, which is of a political nature, and which the European Parliament does not seem willing to resolve. I shall therefore take it upon myself to do so.
Once the euro has actually been introduced into circulation, there will be a high risk of counterfeiting, particularly because of the decision that was taken to launch from scratch an entirely new currency which will cause all citizens to lose their points of reference. It may have been designed to do exactly that. Once citizens have lost their points of reference, there is a high risk that they will accept counterfeit euros, believing that they are the real thing. The consequences of this confusion will be made worse by the high face value of some notes, of EUR 100, 200 and 500. Yet, who is going to pay the price for this huge risk? The most vulnerable, the most fragile, those who are least well-informed, small businesses, micro-businesses who may find themselves bearing the cost of worthless, forged notes that they have accepted by mistake.
This situation is unacceptable – all the more so because it is the same people who are being asked to bear the often very substantial costs of changing over to the euro and who will receive absolutely no financial compensation. It is, therefore, unacceptable that we today continue to pretend that these costs do not exist and to implicitly accept that they are to be borne by the most vulnerable people.
We are asking the national and European authorities not to shirk their responsibilities. We are asking them to give citizens a guarantee that they will be reimbursed if they accept a forged note by mistake, at least during a transitional period. Otherwise, then, we should provide small businesses with free detectors for forged banknotes. Some will say to me that we do not have the money to do that. I shall reply that we should have thought of this before. We must now shoulder the responsibility, in other words, to postpone the changeover to coins and notes until next January – would it matter after everything we have been through? This would, in any case, be desirable for several other reasons."@en1
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