24/01/2003 (Agence Europe) - According to estimates published on Thursday by the European Central Bank (ECB) during the second half of 2002, a total of 145,153 counterfeit Euro banknotes were removed from circulation. Compared to 21,965 counterfeits being removed during the first half of the year. The ECB declared that this was "an exceptionally low figure…considering that approximately 8.2 billion genuine Euro banknotes were in circulation at the end of 2002. The most counterfeited note was the 50 Euro note (84% of all forged EUR 50 notes were found in the second half of 2002. The ECB is not providing and country-by country statistics but indicated that it had found 414 additional Euro notes in countries not using the single currency. According to the ECB, counterfeits are still of bad quality but that the techniques for forging appear to be improving especially over recent months, warned the ECB. The Commission indicated that since the adoption of the single currency, 2,339 counterfeit coins were detected out of a total number of 39.95 billion Euro coins in circulation at the end of 2002, which represents less than one tenth of the number of counterfeit coins detected in 2001. The Italian authorities announced that they dismantled two illegal workshops in 2002 and seized over 70,000 counterfeit coins, mainly 50c and 1€ denominations.