If you are in possession of €20 and €50 banknotes it pays to have a closer look at them because new statistics confirm they are the paper money most likely to be counterfeit.

The latest official figures released in Brussels indicated that the share of counterfeit €20 banknotes dropped while that of €50 banknotes increased over the past six months. Almost equal numbers of each denomination were recovered because they were false in the first half of 2010, together accounting for almost 85 per cent of the total.

The €100 banknote is the third most counterfeited denomination at 12 per cent of the total.

The share of the other denominations (€5, €10, €200 and €500) is very low.

The data show that 387,000 counterfeit euro banknotes were withdrawn from circulation across the EU in the first half of 2010, a drop of about 13 per cent on the quantity recovered in the previous six months.

When compared with the increasing number of genuine euro banknotes in circulation (on average 13.2 billion in the first half of 2010), the proportion of counterfeits remains very low. Nevertheless, the EU authorities continue to advise the public to remain alert with banknotes received in cash transactions.