Greek central bank has a currency press outside Athens, but actually going ahead and printing unauthorised notes would be an extreme step

Faced with shuttered banks and ATMs all but drained of cash, but with most of its citizens saying they would rather stay in the eurozone than revert to the drachma, could Greece simply decide to print its own euro notes?

It is certainly physically capable of doing so: the Greek central bank owns a press in Holargos, a suburb of Athens, that once printed drachma and is currently one of 14 high-security currency printing works across the eurozone producing euro banknotes.

But actually going ahead and printing unauthorised notes would amount to a declaration of war on the European Central Bank.

Since the currency’s introduction in 2002, all euro banknotes have been produced jointly by the national central banks of the eurozone area according to a strict schedule. According to the ECB, each national bank takes charge of – and pays for – a fixed proportion of the total annual production of one or more denominations of notes, which are then shipped to their destinations as required.

Volumes for the years ahead are set in advance using forecasts provided by each of the national banks combined with a central forecast made by the ECB. The overall number and denominations of notes produced then has to be approved each year by the ECB’s governing council, and must be enough to meet expected and unexpected increases in demand and to replace worn notes.

Aside from moral and legal questions that would undoubtedly arise if Greece were to go ahead and print more of its own euros, however, there is another issue that makes this scenario highly unlikely: according to the ECB’s website, the Greek press is only set up to print €10 notes. It would need to print tens of billions of those to produce enough money to meet its needs.