Last week the European Parliament’s committee on economic affairs rejected the rapporteur’s stance, as many lawmakers questioned whether he supports the digital euro at all. This has thrown the timeline into disarray and risks delaying its introduction.
Despite serving as rapporteur, Spanish EPP lawmaker Fernando Navarrete is seen in as sceptical of the digital euro — a perception that appears to have cost him support in committee
“At the moment, there are shadow and technical meetings going on. The rapporteur and the shadows are discussing and trying to find a compromise text. All of this is not public,” explained Laura Casonato, Head of Policy at Positive Money Europe, describing a process when the main MEP leading a file meets with representatives of the other parliamentary factions to find a common ground.
However she tried to remain optimistic: “At least work on this legislative file has finally resumed after being stuck for more than a year. We had amendments tabled in December, and they were considered at the end of January. But it became clear then that there are different deals within and between the political groups, including within the EPP and ECR.”
Indeed a split is evident within EPP as almost two-thirds of EPP lawmakers including the group’s ECON coordinator, Markus Ferber, rejected the draft by their own rapporteur.
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Social democrats: Stop delaying
Jonás Fernández, S&D spokesperson on economic and monetary affairs, said Navarrete’s efforts to slow down the adoption of the digital euro, which it’s hoped would reduce Europe’s dependence on US payment companies such as Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay and Google Pay, would not be tolerated.
“We want to move swiftly towards a fully-fledged digital euro,” he said. “There is no room for further delaying tactics. We call on the EPP rapporteur to take note of the House’s position and abandon a strategy that divides the project – one that merely seeks to postpone indefinitely the approval of an online digital euro while, in the meantime, pushing through an offline digital euro with the support of the far right. Slowing down the process is not a viable option. It is time to move forward decisively,” said Fernández.
This was clear in the ammendment as Parliament adopted its annual review of the European Central Bank’s policies and its recommendations for 2026 including approving the ECB’s ongoing work on the introduction of the digital euro, which the majority of MEPs say is essential to strengthening EU monetary sovereignty.
Vote before summer? Not likely
The latest timeline includes technical meetings and votes in the ECON committee in early May and the plenary before summer. But diverging views among and within political groups complicate the process.
“Seeing what’s happening, my view is that this can also be postponed or delayed,” said Casonato. “It’s difficult for MEPs to agree on a compromise text. So in my view, it might take a bit more time.”
The European Council has already agreed its position and though the amendments in ECON have taken the text quite far away from the Commission proposal, approval of a position in plenary would mean the file would progress quite quickly from that point. But getting there still looks like an uphill battle.
“If we look at the amendments, we can say that the Renew group’s position is quite close to the Council’s, while S&D and the Left are closer to the Commission proposal. EPP and ECR are split on this. So there are diverging views, even if they’re not all radically different. The main question is: what can happen now, and what do we expect? So far, the progressive front has been quite united — meaning S&D, the Greens, the Left and Renew. They all agree in principle that we need a digital euro that works for people and citizens,” explained Casonato.
Did lobbyists win?
One of the charges levelled at Navarrete is that he wants to maintain the status quo at any costs and has been swayed by private and commercial bank lobbying rather than the public interest.
Casonato is quite clear on the point: “If we look at the Transparency Register, he has had many meetings with the banking lobby and industry. We met with him in December, and he had some other meetings with two or three civil society organisations working on this. But the majority of his meetings were with banking lobbyists. And the banking lobby has huge resources to lobby against the digital euro.”
Private banks are resistant to a digital euro both as a payment method and a store of value. The digital euro is designed to be a free, public payment method, directly challenging fee-based systems operated by banks. This is its key usefulness in terms of sovereignty. But it could also be used as a digital wallet and users may move their money out of private bank accounts to central bank-backed digital euro wallets meaning banks lose out.
MEPs are also split on these distinctions. Some want it only to be a means of payment, but not really a full store of value.
Casonato thinks it should be both: “In our view, and as the ECB has also stated, we really need a digital form of cash — digital money. So the digital euro should be both a means of payment AND a store of value.”
Holding limit high enough to pay rent?
This has led to discussion about caps on that so-called “store of value”
“We all agree that the digital euro will have holding limits,” said Casonato. “The ECB sent a letter some months ago to the ECON Committee saying that studies show that up to €3,000 there is no financial stability risk. As Positive Money, we think the holding limit should be high enough so that people can pay their rent or electricity bills, so that it really works as cash. If the holding limit is very low and you cannot pay your rent or receive your salary in digital euro, then what’s the point?”
“This is a pivotal moment for the digital euro, and there seems to be an understanding that it’s important to do it now. But that means policymakers in the European Parliament have to overcome their differences. So we’ll see. I have hope, but not optimism,” she concluded.
