Seventy economists and policy experts published an open letter, urging Members of the European Parliament to shape a digital euro that serves the public interest and preserves Europe’s monetary sovereignty.
The open letter, titled ‘The Digital Euro: Let the public interest prevail!’, laid out a compact set of priorities for lawmakers. Key demands included universal access, robust privacy safeguards, and measures to prevent the displacement of central-bank money by private payment systems.
The signatories — a coalition backed by the Sustainable Finance Lab and including names such as Panicos Demetriades and Thomas Piketty — set out design principles aimed at financial inclusion, privacy protections and stability.
According to the letter, roughly 70% of digital transactions in the EU are currently processed by US-based companies, a level of dependence the economists said leaves Europe exposed to geopolitical and systemic risks. They argued that a public digital euro would help reclaim control over the payments stack and reduce foreign leverage over European financial flows.
ECB progress, political hurdles and market implications
The European Central Bank closed its preparatory phase in October 2025 and has been running an innovation platform with about 70 market participants to test technical architecture and features such as offline payments and conditional payments. The ECB has repeatedly emphasized that the Eurosystem will not track user balances or transaction patterns.
Despite technical progress, the economists and the ECB face political and commercial resistance. Commercial banks have expressed concern about deposit disintermediation and operational costs, and consumer surveys show privacy protections remain a key condition for public acceptance. Lawmakers are expected to decide the legislative framework in 2026; the ECB has flagged a potential issuance date in 2029, conditional on that approval.
For market participants and institutional treasuries, the debate has practical angles. A centrally issued digital euro with meaningful privacy and holding limits could alter payment rails, reduce reliance on third-party processors, and change short-term liquidity dynamics for banks. Traders and treasury managers should monitor policy signals on holding limits, tiered remuneration and the scope of permitted private-sector services connected to the digital euro.
Investors and corporate treasuries are now turning their attention to the legislative timetable in 2026 and to the ECB’s ongoing tests of the ecosystem.
