At a cafe in Kosovo's capital Pristina, staff have given up checking whether the two-euro coins people use to pay are genuine, as such a high proportion are fake and as the high quality of some counterfeits makes it almost impossible to tell.
"At the beginning everyone was worried and was checking if the two-euro coins were fake or not," said waiter Endrit.
The number of fake two-euro coins in circulation has seen a massive increase this year, according to law enforcement agencies. At Pristina police's forensic laboratory, staff examined more than 30,000 counterfeit two-euro coins in the first half of this year, compared to 4,451 in the same period last year.
Police said last year they sent 804 cases to prosecutors relating to money forgery, and 486 so far this year. In April they arrested a man and a woman trying to bring 10,600 fake two-euro coins into Kosovo from North Macedonia. Kosovo's Central Bank told Reuters by email that banks and other financial institutions should report all counterfeit money delivered by clients.