In an interview with the Handelsblatt newspaper, Bundesbank Executive Board member Andreas Dombret discusses the manipulation of reference rates and possible alternatives to the current benchmarks. “Obviously, it would be best in the long run to establish several robust reference rates which are based as far as possible on actual transactions”.

“Short-lived pump-priming and spending programmes and ever larger debts for subsequent generations will not create sustainable employment,” says Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann in an interview with the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. For young people in particular, he emphasises, lasting employment is what is needed.

To make Europe competitive, together – that is the challenge, Jens Weidmann, the Bundesbank President, said at a press conference on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Franco-German Financial and Economic Council. Mr Weidmann added that it would take reforms and a reduction of government debt to do so.

The Deutsche Bundesbank issues €5 banknotes of the second euro banknote series, thus bringing the first denomination of the new “Europa” series into circulation in Germany.

The Bundesbank is holding this year's Bundesbank symposium "Banking supervision in dialogue", on current banking supervision topics on 28 May 2013 at the Marriott Hotel in Frankfurt am Main. Registrations are now being accepted.