Mario Draghi: Address to mark the launch of the new €50 banknote
Speech by Mr Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank, at The ECB and Its
Watchers XVIII Conference, Frankfurt am Main, 6 April 2017.
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It is my pleasure to be here this afternoon to launch the new €50 banknote. This is the
culmination of a huge amount of research and dedication from my colleagues in the ECB and the
Eurosystem, and I applaud them for producing another first-rate product. Although banknotes
may not receive as much attention as other aspects of our monetary policy, they are a
fundamental part of what we do. And in some ways their role is even more important in the euro
area than in other parts of the world.
Though electronic payments are becoming more popular, cash is still our most important means
of payment. A soon-to-be-published survey on cash use, carried out on behalf of the ECB,
shows that over three-quarters of all payments at points-of-sale in the euro area are made in
cash. In terms of transaction values, that's slightly more than half. So even in this digital age,
cash remains essential in our economy.
And this is particularly the case for the €50 note, which is our most important denomination.
There are more than 9 billion of them in circulation, accounting for 46% of all euro banknotes.
That's more than the total number of banknotes issued at the time of the euro cash introduction
in 2002.
So it's clear that, for the economy to function, people must be able to have trust in cash - it has
to be robust, easy to check and readily available. And perhaps most importantly, it has to be
secure: we need to stay ahead of counterfeiters, who might undermine the public's trust in
money. This is why we always put innovation at the heart of our banknote development and strive
to use the latest and most efficient banknote technology.
The new €50 note, for example, incorporates all the improved security features of the new €20
note, making it even more resistant to counterfeiting than the first series. It is also more
userfriendly for visually impaired people, thanks to bolder large letters and numbers on the front and
tactile marks near the edges.
And in order to ensure that the public is familiar with the new note, the Eurosystem has
conducted a wide-ranging communication campaign, aiming to reach its audiences via multiple
channels. This has given our stakeholders the necessary information about the banknote and its
security features.
But there is also another reason why banknotes are a fundamental part of what we do - one
which is more significant for the euro area than for others. In a multi-country union such as ours,
it is inevitably harder to create a shared identity than in a single nation state with its own culture
and history. The euro is something we all have in common - it is a tangible symbol of European
unity.
Holding a euro banknote and knowing that it can be used in 19 countries is a reminder of the
deep integration Europe has attained. Indeed, when asked about the most important elements of
European identity, the single currency is the one most frequently quoted by euro area citizens
after democracy and freedom. And in spite of the difficulties in recent years, support for the
single currency now stands at 70%, equalling the highs recorded in the pre-crisis period.
With the collaboration of the national central banks, credit institutions and banknote equipment
manufacturers, hundreds of thousands of machines and devices have been updated during the
last nine months, meaning that - starting today - the new €50 banknote is available.