Mario Draghi’s speech – New €50 banknote - Live Coverage

ECB’s President Mario Draghi is expected to give a speech at 1430 GMT today. This time Draghi will speak on occasion of the launching of the new €50 banknote in Frankfurt (Germany).

Despite market consensus is not expecting Draghi to talk about monetary policy, there is however some room for surprise particularly after last week’s comments by ECB officials, stressing that market participants seem to have overinterpreted the statement at the March meeting.

Statement

New €50 banknote starts circulating today4 April 2017

• Banknote with upgraded security features enters into circulation today
• New note with Europa portrait and emerald number is more resistant to counterfeiting
• Survey shows cash is still favoured for most payments at points-of-sale

The new €50, the fourth banknote in the Europa series, starts circulating today, the European Central Bank (ECB) announced.

Marking a further step towards making euro banknotes even more resistant to counterfeiting, its security features include a portrait window near the top of the hologram which becomes transparent when looked at against the light. The window reveals a portrait of Europa, a figure from Greek mythology, which is visible on both sides of the note. The same portrait is also visible in the watermark, alongside the emerald number, which displays an effect of the light moving up and down when the note is tilted. The note also includes raised print for the visually impaired.

“Even in this digital age, cash remains essential in our economy,” Mario Draghi, President of the ECB said. “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.”

The full survey results will be made available in summer 2017.

The €50 is the most widely used euro banknote denomination. With over 9 billion of them in circulation, they account for 46% of all euro banknotes. The €50 banknotes of the first series will remain legal tender and continue to circulate alongside the new notes and will be gradually withdrawn from circulation.

New €100 and €200 banknotes will be issued at the beginning of 2019.

About Mario Draghi

The European Central Bank's President Mario Draghi was born in 1947 in Rome, Italy. Graduated of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Draghi became the president of the European Central Bank in 2011. As part of his job in the Governing Council he gives press conferences in the back of how the ECB observes the current European economy. President's comments may determine positive or negative the Euro's trend in the short-term. Usually, if he shows a hawkish outlook, that is seen as positive (or bullish) for the EUR, while a dovish is seen as negative (or bearish).