Christine Lagarde, leader of the ECB, maintains that the digital euro will strengthen the autonomy of the region.
A key meeting will take place this week in Italy to define preparations.
The European Central Bank (ECB) continues to advance its digital euro project, with a possible debut planned for 2029. According to sources close to the organization, the decision to continue with preparations will be analyzed at a meeting this week in Florence, Italy.
The project for this central bank digital currency (CBDC), which has raised concerns about the surveillance and control it may entail, began in 2023 with a two-year preparatory phase. During this time, the European Union was expected to approve the legal framework necessary to introduce it.
This preparation phase ends this month. However, To date, no consensus has been reached. between national governments or in the European Parliament.
The planned launch interval was also publicly mentioned by Piero Cipollone, member of the ECB’s Executive Board, during an event in September, when Indian that “mid-2029 could be a reasonable estimate.”
Although the debate has intensified due to the risk that stablecoins linked to the dollar (USD) will gain ground in the old continent, some members of the European People’s Party prefer private solutions instead of the ECB proposal, according to stand out international media.
As reported by CriptoNoticias, Christine Lagarde, president of the ECB, has stressed the need to accelerate the project to strengthen the strategic autonomy of the region in a context of geopolitical tensions. Europe’s dependence on American companies such as Visa, Mastercard and PayPal in retail payments has intensified pressure to move forward with the digital euro.
In addition to the CBDC, in July the entity committed to launching a plan that allows liquidate Transactions based on distributed ledger technology (DLT).
Notably, the digital euro initiative has generated controversy, with critics warning that it could give governments an unprecedented level of control over citizens’ finances.
Analysts such as the Spanish economist Marc Vidal and the communicator known as “Captain Bitcoin” maintain that this CBDC could turn money into a surveillance tool, by allowing transactions to be tracked and limited according to discretionary criteria.