The emerging market economies have grown significantly over the past 20 years, increasingly becoming the engine fuelling global growth. Recently, however, economic momentum in China, Russia and other countries has tailed off considerably. In the July Monthly Report, the Bundesbank's economists look into the drivers behind this development.

The number of counterfeit euro banknotes seized by the Bundesbank in the first half of 2015 was up 31% on the second half of 2014. However, measured against the amount of cash in circulation in Germany, the incidence of counterfeits remained low, said Bundesbank Executive Board member Carl-Ludwig Thiele. Of all the denominations, €20 and €50 banknotes were counterfeited particularly frequently.

Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann has spoken out against increasing the liquidity assistance provided by the Eurosystem to Greece. If short-term assistance was thought to be necessary, it was up to politicians to provide it, he said at a Bundesbank conference in Frankfurt am Main. Greece needed to keep capital controls in place until an appropriate support package had been agreed by all parties and the solvency of both the Greek government and the Greek banking system had been ensured, said Mr Weidmann.

Bundesbank Executive Board member Andreas Dombret has asked German banks to step up their efforts in digitalising the industry. German banks should also be making greater investments in IT security in order to protect customer data, he said to an audience of around 700 representatives from banking supervision and the banking industry who attended the Bundesbank's 19th banking symposium in Frankfurt.

1 July 1990 marked the day on which the Deutsche Mark was introduced as the official currency in the then German Democratic Republic and became a symbol of German unity. The Bundesbank played a crucial role in the currency changeover.

The Bundesbank marked the 25th anniversary of German monetary union with a ceremony in Leipzig, at which speakers included the former Finance Minister Theodor Waigel and member of the Bundesbank's Executive Board Carl-Ludwig Thiele. Contemporary witnesses detailed their experiences of the currency changeover during a podium discussion.

Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann has criticised the continued provision of emergency liquidity assistance to Greek banks, which, he remarked, plainly raised serious monetary financing concerns. Respecting the euro area's core principles was indispensable for its success, however.

The new European securities settlement service, TARGET2-Securities (T2S) was launched on four markets on 22 June 2015. This represents the first step towards establishing a centralised European platform for settling securities and comes roughly seven years after the official launch of the project in 2008. Once migration has concluded in February 2017, T2S will encompass a total of 21 markets across Europe.

There are additional insights to be gained from going beyond established calculation variables and incorporating inflation options when analysing inflation expectations: so reads the Bundesbank’s recommendation in the June edition of its Monthly Report. Expectations regarding future inflation developments are of major importance to the credibility and effectiveness of a monetary policy with a clear focus on price stability.

Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann believes that abolishing cash is not the right means of stimulating the sluggish economy in some euro-area countries. At the Bundesbank’s payments symposium, Weidmann stated that the decisive factor was to address weak economic growth.