The European Parliament’s recent vote on the digital euro regulation marks an important step toward public money and a sovereign payment system for the digital age.
The vision is simple: give people the choice to hold and pay with the safest form of money – public central bank money – in digital form.
Intense bank lobbying has, however, significantly weakened this public interest vision in the last years.
The co-legislatures’ (Parliament, Council and Commission) legislative texts now strike different balances between money as a public good and the private interest in maintaining bank dominance in money and payments.
The risk: the negotiations tilt too far toward bank interests and people will not use it.
