A digital euro for the public good - Designing the future of money for a sovereign EU

Money is a core public good, but the future of what money is and how people in the EU use it to pay is at stake. The digital euro offers a crucial opportunity to reaffirm money as a public good in the digital age and to reconfigure the monetary system to serve people and society rather than profit. Rapid digitalisation and the declining acceptance of cash (notes and coins) are accelerating the privatisation of money and payment systems. At the same time the EU payment landscape is becoming ever more dependent on non-EU private actors. This raises growing concerns about sovereignty, strategic autonomy, and democratic accountability. 

Globally, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) reflect sharply divergent political choices. More than 130 countries have explored CBDCs in response to the rise of private digital finance and crypto-assets, yet only a limited number have issued them, with China the only major economy to do so. By contrast, the United States has explicitly rejected a CBDC in favour of privately issued stablecoins. 

In this fragmented context, the EU’s choices on the digital euro will have global repercussions on the possibility to re-establish money as a public good. However, this potential will only be realised if the digital euro is designed around clear public policy objectives. So far, the policy process has been heavily shaped by banking-sector concerns, with limited public participation. The Commission proposal, Council position, and European Parliament amendments all fail to unlock the digital euro’s full public value. Prolonged delays and excessive caution, driven by banking interests, is delivering a digital euro that is unattractive to users and incapable of providing a meaningful public alternative to private bank deposits.

To ensure that money remains a public good in the digital age, Positive Money Europe supports the introduction of a digital euro with the following core features:

• Be available in all payment contexts: the digital euro must function across all payment contexts by combining an account-based model for online and remote payments with a value-based, offline digital cash option.

• Be universally accessible: the digital euro must be accessible through both public and private distributors, with at least one public provider in each Member State, to guarantee equal access across the euro area and prevent financial exclusion.

• Be universally accepted: the legal framework must ensure full and enforceable legal tender status, ensuring acceptance throughout the euro area in both physical and online commerce.

• Be a store of value: the digital euro must allow sufficiently high holding limits to function as a meaningful store of value. These limits should be set and incrementally adjusted by the ECB based on financial stability considerations and users’ practical needs, rather than on protecting existing bank business models.

• Be free of cost for users and competitive for merchants: the legal framework must guarantee free basic services for users, free core acquiring services for merchants, and strictly capped, cost-based transaction fees well below current card payment prices.

• Offer a higher level of privacy and data protection than current systems: the digital euro must embed privacy by design, providing significantly stronger data protection than existing digital payments through a cash-like, value-based option and a tiered identification model that minimises data collection.

Read our full position in the document below.