Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-07-03-Speech-2-179"
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"en.20010703.9.2-179"2
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".
Mr President, I will try to respond to Mr Posselt with a degree of detail. Firstly, I would point out to him that the Commission is not responsible for the introduction of notes and coins. As he knows, notes are the responsibility of the Central Bank and the system of central banks and, in the case of coins, it is the national authorities who are responsible. However, with regard to the changeover process, we must distinguish between activities within the eurozone and those outside it. Within the eurozone, it is the central banks and the mints, or the Finance Ministries, who have decided on the changeover plans. Outside the eurozone, it is considered basically as a commercial activity and it is left to the whim of the market. That means that the national banks are not, therefore, involved in the logistics and channels for distributing the new coins or recovering the old coins, and they must maintain the systems they have traditionally used for this type of operation.
Nevertheless, it is true that there is concern within the European Central Bank and in some national banks, in particular the German Central Bank, as a result of the enormous number of German Marks in existence outside the eurozone, that action should be taken to support the changeover situation in the countries outside the zone. In this respect, on 14 December 2000, the European Central Bank took the decision to allow frontloading or the pre-supply of euros to those financial institutions which are branches or subsidiaries of European banks in the countries outside the eurozone. Clearly, if the Central Bank is working on the possibility of pre-supply, the first step has been taken for this type of financial body to be able to move ahead with the process following the change of currency.
In the former Yugoslavia there are three different cases: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and Montenegro. In the case of Bosnia-Herzegovina, we are talking about a currency board with a national currency linked to the Mark with an exchange rate of 1 to 1. However, it is the case that that currency belongs to Bosnia-Herzegovina and will not undergo any change in itself. It will no longer have a relationship with the Mark, but a set relationship with the euro and will be approximately half of the euro, which is the same as the Mark-euro relationship. With regard to Kosovo, there is a significant level of possession of physical
currency. It is an economy where the currency circulation is based on notes which are not normally from the area and which, in particular, are not from the Mark zone. The Yugoslavian Dinar is still legal tender, but it is also the case that the Mark is in circulation and it was recognised as a currency which can operate and the circulation of the euro will clearly not change that situation. There is a specific problem of how to change these Marks which are circulating into euro notes and coins. According to my information, the German Central Bank, which, at the time, became aware of this situation, is thinking about which solution to adopt for this type of situation. The problem of Montenegro is similar. In November 1999, it decided to unilaterally establish a double currency system between the Mark and a parallel currency; on 1 December, the Government of Montenegro declared the Mark to be the only legal currency in the territory of the republic and, as in Kosovo, the Commission has no powers to act and, in our opinion, it will also fall to the Federal Republic of Germany’s Central Bank to take the relevant decisions in order to carry out operations other than frontloading operations which, as I said before, will be carried out using branches and subsidiaries of the European banks which work in that area."@en1
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