The Digital Euro is Here (1)
'It is the ECB´s prerogative to decide whether or not to issue a digital euro.' ∽ From the Legislative Proposal tabled for a vote in the EU Parliament in June 2026
Somewhere between chit-chat of heat waves and the football world cup, which dominate the airwaves right now, it would seem, a momentous milestone has been reached (and I bet you’ve yet to hear about it from the telly). Reference is thus made to these two pieces, which bear the most relevance for today’s
Here’s a long-ish update on the digital euro; no translations of mine are found (except commentary rendering EU-speak into something more understandable), but I’ve added emphases and [snark].
The EU Parliament’s ECON Committee Meets
A few days ago, the EU Parliament™ formally adopted the digital euro. After it has been all done, all that was required was a kind of vote™ in the Economy Committee earlier this month. From the EU Parliament agenda for the ‘digital finance package’:
Cash is the only means of payment that allows direct in-person payments, with immediate settlement and without involvement of any third party or use of electronic equipment. In order to respond to the increasing demand for safe and trusted electronic payments, in 2021 the ECB launch an investigation phase into a central bank digital currency in Europe. Such a digital euro can be understood as central bank money offered in digital form for use by citizens and businesses for their retail payments.
Pray tell, why do we need a gargantuan infrastructure that will involve third, fourth, and any other number of parties—talk about ‘end user licence agreements’ here, eh?—plus required electronic equipment (that’s your S.M.A.R.T. device plus whatever internet-enabling stuff™ that’s required, e.g., WiFi routers, a modem somewhere, the ethernet connection, etc.).
Legislative Proposal:
Eventually, it is the ECB´s prerogative to decide whether or not to issue a digital euro [in case anyone needed a reminder about who’s in charge and how much involvement of the EU Parliament™ in this is is PHEIC (all of it)]. But such decision requires the approval of a regulation establishing a legal framework for a digital euro [sums up Europeans’ problems, right there]. Thus, on 28 June 2023 the European Commission put forward a digital euro package.
The digital euro package would establish a new, digital form of central bank money, alongside euro banknotes and coins. The purpose of this legislation is to regulate the main aspects of a digital euro in order to ensure the same rules and conditions are applied throughout the euro area when using the digital euro [which they are, apparently, not with respect to cash?]…
European Parliament works on the Digital Euro
On 9 February 2024, former rapporteur Berger tabled his draft report, for which amendments were tabled on 21 February. The LIBE committee provided its opinion on this legislative file. No vote on this draft report has taken place. In December 2024 rapporteur Berger stepped down. In his stead, the new rapporteur Fernando Navarrete Rojas succeeded him.
The draft report prepared by MEP Navarrete was presented to the ECON Committee on 5 November, with the deadline for submitting amendments set for 12 December.
The rapporteur’s draft report introduces several key changes to the Commission’s proposal.
First, it distinguishes clearly between an offline and an online digital euro. The offline version, designed as a tokenised form of cash, would be introduced immediately, enabling device-to-device payments with strong privacy and resilience, even without network access. The online version, based on ECB infrastructure, would only be launched if no viable pan-European payment solution emerges.
Second, the draft strengthens privacy safeguards by ensuring the offline digital euro does not rely on ECB ledger settlement, better mirroring the anonymity of cash while allowing specific AML/CTF limits.
[line break added] Third, it introduces a more structured approach to holding limits, giving the Commission, not the ECB, the main role in setting ceilings based on financial stability assessments, with stricter rules for revisions. Finally, it refines the compensation framework and adds a ten-year review clause to allow a shift to a more efficient costbased model.
Negotiations in the ECON committee on amendments to the draft report are on-going. A committee vote on the draft report is schedules for 23 June 2026.
In case you’re scratching your head about these (and other) differences between the two main drafts, well, here’s a pretty useful write-up by Eurotoday.net (5 Jan. 2026; archived)
In a legislative status note published by the Parliament’s research service, the draft report presented to ECON on 5 November 2025 is described as departing from the Commission’s original design in several key areas, including a sharper split between offline and online models and more prescriptive limits on holdings.
Under the rapporteur’s approach, the offline digital euro would be established immediately as a tokenised, device-to-device instrument intended to replicate cash-like attributes, including use during network disruptions. The online version — an account-based system settling via ECB-run infrastructure — would be introduced only if the Commission, after an investigation phase, concluded that no suitable pan-European sovereign retail payment solution existed.
Privacy is a central fault line. The ECB has argued that an offline function can offer a “cash-like level of privacy” because transactions would not involve sharing personal transaction data with payment service providers, the Eurosystem, or supporting service providers. Opponents in the Parliament have raised concerns about surveillance risks and the scope for data collection if online payments are routed through intermediaries, while supporters say legal design choices can hardwire privacy protections and limit what data is processed.
Cost is the other major argument. Estimates differ sharply. The Financial Times reported ECB estimates of around €6 billion, while citing PwC work putting costs far higher; Reuters has previously reported PwC estimates in the tens of billions of euros. Banks, which would be expected to provide consumer-facing services such as wallets and onboarding, have warned about implementation costs and the risk that customers shift deposits into central bank money in periods of stress [whatever number is floated here or there, it’ll be much, much higher due to grift, boondoggles, and lack of transparency and accountability].
To address financial stability concerns, the Council text provides for limits on how much can be held in online accounts and wallets, set by the ECB within an overall ceiling agreed by governments and reviewed at least every two years. ECB officials and media reporting have discussed a holding cap in the region of €3,000 per person, though final levels would be determined in the legislation and subsequent rule-setting.
Note two overarching aspects here: first, none of these concerns mean fundamental disagreements exist between the EU Council—that would be the assembled heads of all EU member-states (meaning any EU citizen™ can not claim that this is done ‘by them’)—and the EU Parliament.
Second, this is what spending other people’s money brings about: there’s no reliable cost estimate, which begs the question of what the price tag of this kind of boondoggle will be much higher than anticipated in this ECB guidance (date-stamped 4 Dec. 2025):
The final cost of a digital euro – both for its development and operation – will depend on its final design, components and related services that need to be developed. Total development costs, comprising both externally and internally developed components, are estimated at around €1.3 billion until the first issuance, which is currently expected during 2029. Subsequent annual operating costs are projected to be approximately €320 million per year from 2029.
I doubt every single word in that paragraph, especially as this is what this shitshow is projected to cost the ECB. Here’s what this is anticipated to cost the banks:
‘Digital euro to cost EU banks 4-6 billion euros over 4 years, ECB estimates’, via Reuters, 19 Feb. 2026 (source; archived)
PwC did a ‘Digital Euro Cost Study’ in June 2025, which posited an extrapolation of about 18b euros across the Eurozone, but limitations apply, for that study™ assumed that most smaller retail banks would utilise their parent company’s systems (which is plausible), but there’s much more:
If anything, I think that both Mastercard and Visa are moving behind the scenes to un-do this; what the ‘digital euro’ is, apparently, is not a simple (ahem) CBDC; if that PwC rah-por™ is accurate—to be fair, it’s in the section entitled ‘Design Assumptions’—the ‘digital euro’ is more like Russia’s payment system, i.e., it could, technically, not be shut down by US deep state actors in cahoots with Mastercard and Visa.
Hence, I find it no longer totally surprising that the EU Parliament™ tabled their vote™ to move on with this ‘package’:
In December 2025, the Council adopted its negotiating position on the digital euro package, setting out a coherent framework for both digital and physical public money. On the digital euro, it supports the introduction of an ECB-backed public means of payment that would complement cash and private solutions and function both online and offline, while embedding strong safeguards for financial stability, consumer protection and market fairness. These include ECB-set holding limits within a Council-defined ceiling, free basic services for users, regulated fees for additional services, guaranteed fair access to mobile devices for payment providers, and a clear compensation regime with capped fees during a transitional period followed by cost-based pricing.
I also don’t believe a single word after the highlighted ‘free basic services’ part—would that mean, as I believe it does—the functional equivalent of the 509 euros per month for basic living expenditures permitted™ (‘beyond the rule of law’) to dissident journos™, such as Hüseyin Doğru:
Bottom Lines
If taken as a whole, there is certainly much more than meets the eye.
Personally, I find the ambition to create a payments system outside the influence of the US-UK system (Mastercard, Visa) a good idea, and there is a precedent for this, Russia’s payment system that’s beyond the SWIFT system.
Will this be adopted in the way it is marketed? I doubt it, for the EU is the brainchild of Anglo-American élites, and if there’s anything these people will do, it’s to prevent exactly this kind of de-coupling from the way the financial system has worked since 1944/45:
Moreover, since the ECB head, Ms. Christine Lagarde, is deeply enmeshed in the US-UK financial system (she’s a former head of the IMF) is also a convicted felon, I suppose that if such a payment system will be implemented, it’ll come with backdoor access for the intelligence community.
Finally, this will be way more expensive than any of the estimates, if only because the chieftain overseeing all of this is is a convicted felon whose crime was (drum roll) ‘negligence in allowing the misuse of public funds’. I’ll let Wikipedia tell you the gist here:
On 3 August 2011, La Cour de Justice de la République, a special court in France set up to judge ministers and public officials for alleged crimes committed while in office, ordered an investigation into Lagarde’s role in a €403 million arbitration deal in favour of businessman Bernard Tapie when she was finance minister in 2007.[97] On 20 March 2013, Lagarde’s apartment in Paris was raided by French police as part of the investigation.[98] On 24 May 2013, after two days of questioning at the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR), Lagarde was assigned the status of “assisted witness”, meaning that she herself was not under investigation in the affair.[99] According to a press report from June 2013, Lagarde was described by Stéphane Richard, the CEO of France Telecom (a former aide to Lagarde when she was finance minister), who was himself put under formal investigation in the case, as having been fully briefed before approving the arbitration process which benefitted Bernard Tapie.[100][101]
In 2013, the press revealed an undated hand-written letter seized by investigators during a search of Christine Lagarde’s Paris home, in which she appears to express her full allegiance to then-President Nicolas Sarkozy: “Use me for as long as it suits you and suits your action and your casting. (...) If you use me, I need you as a guide and as a support: without a guide, I risk being ineffective, without a support I risk having little credibility. With my immense admiration. Christine L.”[102]
Subsequently, in August 2014 the CJR announced that it had formally approved a negligence investigation into Lagarde’s role in the arbitration of the Tapie case.[103] On 17 December 2015, the CJR ordered Lagarde to stand trial before it for alleged negligence in handling the Tapie arbitration approval.[104][105][106]
In December 2016, the court found Lagarde guilty of negligence but declined to impose either a fine or a custodial penalty.[107]
To be continued in part two tomorrow.
I think it is high time to re-name the currency anyway. "Euro" sounds silly and fake.
Daler or sesterti would be my preference.
The way things are going though, they ought to call it "Ruble" because that's what it is.
“Democracy” at work!