Kofi Mensah Christine Lagarde, the leader of the economic group that’s in charge of European money, said that the digital euro is very important for Europe because it’ll keep people in Europe independent with their payments. This new currency is being made to be safe and affordable for everyone to use. Christine talked about this during a meeting focused on digital money from central banks.
The European Central Bank’s Digital Euro Move
The President of the European Central Bank (ECB), Christine Lagarde, said that creating a digital euro could help make sure Europe has more control over its payments. This was during a meeting where people talked about special digital money made by central banks. The meeting was hosted by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).
When you check your wallet and phone, you’ll notice that the payment options are not necessarily from Europe. That’s according to Bloomberg’s quote from Ms Lagarde.
The head of the European Central Bank recently had a discussion where he suggested we should not rely on just one source for important aspects of life. He used the situation in Ukraine and Russia as an example- where Russia has used energy supply as a weapon. Despite this being seen by some people as ‘sovereign autonomy’, the ECB leader defines it as resilience.
In mid-2021, the European Central Bank (ECB) began to work on a project which involves releasing a digital version of the euro. By December 2022, they released a progress report and in January 2023, all the governments in the eurozone countries said that they support this plan.
Back in November last year, Lagarde said that the European Commission will likely release a plan for a new type of currency called a CBDC (Crypto-based Digital Currency) by June. After this, they’ll make a final decision on whether or not to actually start using it. That decision should be made around the end of this year.
Christine Lagarde talked about how digital payments are becoming more common and cash is being used less. She said that the digital euro should be secure, owned by the government and cost as little as possible. But she added that it wouldn’t give the same amount of privacy you get with paper bills. “A digital currency can never be kept hidden like cash,” she said, which is why there will always be physical money around.
Do you think that the European leaders are going to make a decision to create a digital euro currency? Leave your opinion in the comments section!
