The European Parliament’s economic committee voted to advance the digital euro, which has become one of the EU’s main responses to geopolitical uncertainty.
“This is a historic day for Europe,” said centre-left Socialists & Democrats MEP Aurore Lalucq who is the committee chair, following the vote on Tuesday (23 June).
“Strengthening the resilience of payments in Europe has become a geopolitical necessity,” echoed Markus Ferber, economy spokesperson for the conservative European People’s Party group.
“We can no longer accept that digital payments are largely dependent on the goodwill of a few foreign providers. This package changes that,” he also said.
The file will now go to a full parliamentary vote, after which negotiations with member states can begin.
“On the digital euro, I hope we are able to finalise the legislative process this year,” said EU economy commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis at an event in Brussels on Monday.
Reliance on US systems
Europe relies on US providers for virtually all digital payment use cases, from e-commerce to person-to-person transfers, with Visa and Mastercard alone processing nearly two-thirds of eurozone card payments.
The European Central Bank (ECB) first suggested the digital euro in 2021 in response to the rise of dollar-backed stablecoins.
The commission in 2023 originally proposed a digital euro that would be usable both on- and offline. But it took years for member states to agree.
In Germany especially, there is widespread fear that the digital euro will abolish cash and enable government surveillance of spending, claims which were again vigorously rejected by European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde at an event in Brussels on Monday.
Wester van Gaal