Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann has warned of the flipside of protectionism. "Trade-restrictive measures often provoke backlashes, and these harbour the risk of erupting into trade wars in which there can only be losers," he said in a speech in Hamburg.

Bundesbank Executive Board member Andreas Dombret has defended the Basel III package of reforms in a panel discussion held at the Institute for Law and Finance of the University of Frankfurt. "Yes, we are done with Basel, but we should lose no time and start implementing it," he said.

December 2017 saw an array of central banks and financial supervisory authorities launch a new network to address green finance and sustainable investment. The network, which counts the Bundesbank amongst its members, recently held its inaugural meeting in Paris.

In 2017, the Bundesbank registered around 73,000 counterfeit euro banknotes with a nominal value of €4.1 million – 11% fewer than in the previous year. The number of counterfeit €20 banknotes declined in particular.

In the current issue of the Monthly Report, Bundesbank economists state that an accommodative monetary policy can, in a low-interest-rate setting, put a damper on lending business if commercial banks hold only a small amount of capital. In and of itself, such a relationship would counter the desired effects of an accommodative monetary policy.

Germany’s strong and broadly based economic upswing continued into the fourth quarter of 2017. As the Bundesbank’s January Monthly Report explains, industrial orders and labour market conditions are in excellent shape, as are business and consumer sentiment.

Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann has sounded a warning against attaching too much importance to Germany’s high current account surplus. At a conference in Frankfurt am Main hosted jointly by the Bundesbank and the International Monetary Fund, he explained that it was partly a reflection of the very accommodative monetary policy in the euro area.

Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann says the Eurosystem’s asset purchase programme should be discontinued this year if growth in consumer price inflation remains upbeat. Speaking to the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, he said he is confident that the Eurosystem is on a path towards its target inflation rate of below, but close to, 2%.

Initial calculations by the Federal Statistical Office indicate that price-adjusted gross domestic product in Germany rose by 2.2% last year. The strong growth on the demand side was broadly based and was supported by both external and domestic stimuli. In 2017, employment reached its highest level since German reunification.

Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann has cautioned against increasing mutual liability in the euro area and thus weakening the principle of individual national responsibility. Addressing an audience in Frankfurt am Main, Mr Weidmann said that while the fiscal rescue measures had prevented the crisis from escalating, they had not made the euro area permanently crisis-proof.