Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel and First Deputy Governor Sabine Mauderer, responsible for Controlling, Accounting and Organisation, will present the Annual Report 2024 on Tuesday, 25 February 2025, at 11:00. The press conference will be streamed live on the internet.

The Bundesbank registered roughly 72,400 counterfeit euro banknotes in German payments in 2024. Thus, the number of counterfeits was up by 28 % compared with the previous year. At the same time, however, the loss arising from counterfeiting went down. Overall, the incidence of counterfeit money remains moderate in scale: statistically speaking, in 2024 there were nine counterfeit banknotes per 10,000 inhabitants, said Burkhard Balz, member of the Bundesbank’s Executive Board.

I am confident that our financial system can mobilise the necessary financing, Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel said in a speech at the Adam Smith Business School in Glasgow, where he talked about the financing for the transition to a greenhouse gas-neutral economy. He also elaborated on what the potential financing mix to fund the transition might look like. Furthermore, Nagel emphasised the need for a strong banking system and improved access to capital market financing. 

Bundesbank Executive Board member Burkhard Balz has spoken out in favour of a future that includes cash: Let us work together to ensure that cash keeps its time-tested place in an increasingly digitalised world, he said in his speech at the Bundesbank’s cash symposium in Berlin. In order to guarantee freedom of choice in payments, access to and acceptance of cash must be maintained, said Mr Balz.

The Governing Council of the ECB has shortlisted the motifs for the two possible themes for future euro banknotes: “European culture: shared cultural spaces” and “Rivers and birds: resilience in diversity”. The selected motifs include Ludwig van Beethoven, Marie Curie and Leonardo da Vinci. “Rivers and birds” included a kingfisher in a waterfall, a white stork flying over a river valley and a wallcreeper next to a mountain landscape. The ECB is expected to make the final decision on the designs of the new banknotes in 2026.

The finance ministers of the federal states met in Frankfurt am Main for a change. And for a very particular reason: this marked the 1,000th meeting of the Bundesrat’s Finance Committee. The venue was the same building where, on 25 and 26 September 1946, the “German Financial Council” convened for the first time: under the roof of what was to become the Bank deutscher Länder, the Bundesbank’s predecessor institution. 

The German economy remained listless at the end of 2024. According to the Bundesbank’s latest Monthly Report, industry has been particularly weak. It is also unlikely that the German economy will manage to escape the period of stagnation in the first quarter of 2025. The inflation rate is still elevated but is likely to decline soon.

According to the current issue of the Bundesbank’s Monthly Report, German economic output fell surprisingly significantly in the fourth quarter of 2024. The main reasons for this were declining exports and weak industrial output, especially in the automotive sector, while private and government consumption expenditure rose. The labour market outlook also suggests a continued cooldown. 

Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel officially inaugurated Ulf Slopek as President of the Regional Office in Hesse in a ceremony attended by over 150 invited guests – and said a formal farewell to Mr Slopek’s predecessor Thomas Ollinger, who now heads the Bundesbank’s Directorate General Procurement.

The tendency of monetary policy to influence investors’ risk appetite has a significant impact on the effectiveness of the Eurosystem’s monetary policy on the macroeconomy and financial markets, according to an article in the latest Monthly Report. In it, the authors examine the impact of monetary policy measures on the risk appetite of euro area investors. Their analysis is based on a new broad-based indicator of risk appetite in the euro area.