Retail giant demands euro security let up

Date: 13/09/01

By Laurence Frost

EXCESSIVE security around the euro is making it impossible to teach shop staff how to spot forgeries in time for January's launch, according to retailers.

Finland's retail and wholesale giant Kesko Corporation is leading the EU sector's campaign for easier access to euros for training, after the country's central bank became the first in the eurozone to announce its conditions for releasing the notes.

On top of their own personnel costs, Finnish businesses have to pay for security guards from private firms to transport the notes and stay with them throughout the training - at a cost of around €250 per session. "We have 25,000 people to train in the retail field," said Jouko Kuisma, EU affairs director at the Finnish firm, which has an annual turnover of 6.3 billion euro. "That would be about 20 of our entire training budget for the year." Combined with the costs, retailers say the lack of capacity in the money transport business makes training for all impossible in the pre-launch period.

Even when their own supplies of euro notes arrive in December, the central bank has ordered shops not to open the packages until 1 January. "We would have liked to include ultraviolet security features in our training, but that would involve handling the notes," said Kuisma. "The worse our cashiers' knowledge of the new money is, the greater the possibility of forged notes being accepted."

The Bank of Finland is so far resisting Kesko's demands to issue notes to the firm's nine training coordinators, who would take responsibility for handing them back at the end of the programme. "There are security conditions to be met," said bank spokesman Urpo Levo. "We need to know how the notes are going to be stored and transported."

Problems over training with euro notes are currently being discussed in the European Central Bank's 'Banco' committee. European Commission officials have agreed to raise the retailers' concerns with the ECB at next week's informal meeting of eurozone finance ministers in Liège, if no solution has been found by then.

In a changeover simulation at a Dutch branch of McDonald's earlier this year, poorly trained staff made mistakes equivalent to 5 of daily turnover, even with conversion calculators.

Many were confusing 25-guilder notes for 25 euro notes. "It's extremely important that retailers use euro notes for training," said Benjamin Angel of the Commission's economics and finance department. He said the Commission would call on the ECB - which controls the national central banks - to take the lead in recommending a "more flexible approach" to training.

Excessive security around the euro is making it impossible to teach shop staff how to spot forgeries in time for the January 2002 launch, according to retailers.