At meetings in Copenhagen, EU finance ministers agreed on a common position regarding the digital euro, which is being considered as a strategic alternative to payment systems such as Visa and Mastercard. The agreement reached with the European Central Bank and the European Commission provides for ministers to participate in the decision on launching the digital currency and to impose limits on the amount of funds available to citizens in order to reduce the risks of bank outflows.
According to Reuters, the compromise was reached between EU finance chiefs, ECB President Christine Lagarde, and European Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis. Ministers will now have the right to influence decisions on issuance and storage limits of the digital euro for each EU resident.
Lagarde emphasized that the digital euro goes beyond being a payment tool and represents a political statement about Europe’s sovereignty and its ability to ensure cross-border payments with its own infrastructure.
Despite the progress, the process will be lengthy. The European Parliament must approve the bill, with discussions set to begin in the fall. The ECB expects the document to be adopted by June 2026, after which the issuance of the digital euro could take up to three years.
Criticism in Parliament
The main opponent of the project is Member of the European Parliament Fernando Navarrete Rojas, who oversees the topic of the digital euro. He has expressed skepticism about the necessity of the initiative and previously published a 27-page report titled “Do we really need a digital euro?”. In it, he calls the project a response to a non-existent problem.
Navarrete highlighted threats to financial stability, risks to data protection, and the possible imposition of additional responsibilities on the ECB in the fight against fraud and money laundering. According to him, these aspects require thorough assessment.
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