Paschal Owner will also present his work program for the coming months, which will be dedicated to the competitiveness of the eurozone and to maintain the budgetary stability of the Eurozone
Eurogrupo President Paschal Owner, he stressed today the “increasing urgency” of the creation of a digital euro in the single currency space, expecting a “wide consensus” to advance with the legislative process in the European Union (EU).
Intervening upon arrival at the informal meeting of the euro ministers, in Copenhagen due to the Danish Council’s Danish Councilor, Paschal Owner pointed out that this is a “project whose urgency is increasing”.
“We had a lot of work ongoing in the first half of this year, which we intend to complete today regarding the way the Digital Euro would be released and how decisions regarding detention limits would be made,” he said.
The EuroGroup president said he expects “a wide consensus” that allows the Danish presidency, this semester, “proceed with his legislative work in this matter.”
European sources heard by Lusa say they do not expect major advances in a dossier that has been discussed for several years.
Paschal Owner will also present his work program for the coming months, which will be dedicated to the competitiveness of the Eurozone and the maintenance of the budgetary stability of the Eurozone.
The Eurogroup meeting precedes the informal meeting (also without decisions) of the EU finance ministers (in broad and not just euro format), in which one will discuss how to ‘pull’ the economic competitiveness of the community bloc, in the face of criticism of European inertia, namely simplifying community legislation.
As for the Digital Euro, the idea is that it can compete with ‘online’ payment services like Paypal or Apple Pay from the United States or Alipay from China.
It is expected that by 2027 these retail technology platforms-predominantly from the United States and China-are responsible for 40% of e-commerce and 27% of store payments in Europe.
At the moment, the European Central Bank (ECB) is preparing the creation of this digital euro.
After starting the pilot project in 2021, Central Bank has been developing methodology and limitations, creating a manual and finalizing technical aspects.
At the end of 2025, the ECB council should decide if it goes to the next phase of the project.
At issue is a legislative package released by the European Commission in June 2023 to advance to the European Union with this new availability while intending to safeguard the use of the euro in cash.
As part of this package, the institution then proposed a digital euro to, like cash, be available such as cards or applications, acting as a digital wallet through which citizens and companies could pay anytime and anywhere in the eurozone.
It was expected that banks and other payment service providers across the EU would distribute the digital euro, at no cost in the basic version, and that traders throughout the euro area would accept payments with the digital euro, except those of very small dimension, given the cost of infrastructure.
Like cash, the digital euro would be the responsibility of the ECB, to which it will decide whether and when I issue this virtual version of the single currency.
A digital currency is an asset similar to the money that is stored or exchanged through ‘online’ systems, which would be managed by the Central Bank.
