Piero Cipollone, ECB Executive Board member, discusses how the digital euro can enhance Europe’s resilience and autonomy in payments amid global fragmentation.
Piero Cipollone, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank (ECB), delivered a public lecture hosted by the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga and Latvijas Banka. He emphasized the importance of the digital euro in ensuring Europe’s resilience and strategic autonomy in payments in a fragmented world.
He highlighted Latvia’s decision to adopt the euro in 2014 as a move to strengthen sovereignty and European identity. Cipollone noted that sovereignty depends on resilient infrastructure, citing energy dependence as a lesson for payment systems.
The lecture outlined how dependence on non-European payment infrastructure creates vulnerabilities such as disconnection, extraterritorial reach, and market power concentration. Currently, two-thirds of euro area card transactions are governed by non-European companies, with no pan-European digital payment solution in place.
The digital euro is presented as a response to these vulnerabilities. It will be a digital form of cash, legal tender, usable online and offline, and governed by European rules. It aims to reduce dependence on non-European providers, ensure continuity during outages, and mitigate fragmentation and market concentration.
The Eurosystem’s strategy includes offering tokenised central bank money through the Pontes project and developing a resilient European tokenised financial ecosystem via the Appia project. These initiatives aim to foster innovation, competition, and strategic autonomy in European payments.
Cipollone concluded that the digital euro and the new payments strategy are essential for maintaining Europe’s monetary sovereignty in an increasingly fragmented global environment. The next steps involve completing EU legislation and preparing for the pilot issuance of the digital euro.
