Europol, the European police intelligence service, says it expects crime related to the euro to peak during January when many countries will be operating two currencies and there are lots of banknotes in transit.

In the last three months over 3.13m (e5m) has been stolen after raids in a number of "eurozone" countries, including Belgium, Italy, France and the Netherlands.

The largest to date took place in Germany, where 750,573 worth of the currency was taken from a Securicor van. And on 27 December notes worth 322,776 were stolen by thieves in Milan.

Europol has also warned that counterfeiters, principally from Eastern Europe, may take advantage of the publics unfamiliarity with the new notes. However, the forged euros do not have the sophisticated security measures of the genuine notes.

A total of 14.98bn euro banknotes have been produced with 4.78bn allocated to Germany, 2.26bn to France and 46m to Luxembourg. Around 10bn have been distributed to the participating countries, while the balance will be held back for logistical purposes.

De La Rue in Gateshead was the first printer from a non-euro-using country to produce the banknotes.

Story by John Davies