European Central Bank (ECB) executive board member Piero Cipollone revealed that the bank has settled on 2029 as a realistic timeline for establishing a digital euro, in the form of an online payment wallet backed by the central bank.
Speaking at Bloomberg’s Future of Finance event in Frankfurt, Germany, on Tuesday, Cipollone hailed a “major breakthrough” last week after the European Union finance ministers agreed on a framework for customer holding limits, a key feature for controlling usage and safeguarding bank deposits.
“The discussion at the level of member-states is going very well,” he said. “The middle of 2029 could be a fair assessment.”
Cipollone also suggested that the EU Parliament, the European Council, and the European Commission could come to an agreement about the best way to progress by the end of 2025.
“We should arrive at a general approach, as they call it, an agreement among member-states by the end of the year,” Cipollone said, adding that if a consensus on approach to the digital euro is reached by the end of the year, the ECB will require around two and a half to three years to launch, which is how he landed on 2029 as the possible date.
The EU and ECB have been working since 2021 on a possible central bank digital currency (CBDC) for the bloc, in the form of the digital euro. However, while the ECB has made its favorable opinions very clear—pitching the digital euro as a viable digital payment option that covers the entire eurozone and an alternative to the dominant U.S.-based Visa (NASDAQ: V) and Mastercard (NASDAQ: MA) system—the European parliament has been dragging its feet on the necessary legislation.
In April, Cipollone presented to the EU Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) an update on the developments of the digital euro project, urging members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to make progress on the legislative front.
He repeated this plea on September 4, in another speech to ECON, urging “progress in the legislative process,” to provide Europeans with a clear and specific timeline for when they can expect the digital euro to become a reality.
In a Eurogroup press conference in Denmark last week, ECB president Christine Lagarde indicated that an agreement may finally be in place that will allow legislation to progress.
According to a Reuters report, the compromise agreement was reached between EU finance ministers, ECB president Lagarde, and European Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis, that would give the EU ministers a say on whether or not a digital euro is issued and how much money each EU resident will be able to hold in the digital euro, in order to assuage fears of bank runs.
“The digital euro is not just a means of payment, it is also a political statement concerning the sovereignty of Europe and its capacity to handle payment, including on a cross-border basis, with a European infrastructure and solution,” Lagarde said, in her September 19 opening remarks.
She went on to hail the agreement as a major breakthrough for the Digital Euro, which she referred to as “not just a means of payment, it is also a political statement concerning the sovereignty of Europe and its capacity to handle payments, including on a cross-border basis.”
Lagarde also welcomed the “unanimous” support to move forward with a European digital payment infrastructure and reiterated that she and Cipollone were “strong advocates” of the digital euro and were “anxious” to see real legislative progress.
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Digital euro’s slow progress
The journey to this latest agreement on the digital euro began in 2021, when the ECB launched an investigation into a Eurozone CBDC, which would be used by citizens and businesses for retail payments.
This lasted for two years, after which the central bank began the digital euro “preparation phase” in November 2023.
After positive progress, in November 2024, the ECB called for partners to test conditional payments in a CBDC simulation, which started in February 2025. The ECB later announced it was expanding this initiative to settle transactions between institutions with a wholesale CBDC payment system.
In March, Lagarde reaffirmed the ECB’s commitment to the project, saying that the team behind the digital euro was “focused on accelerating the pace,” adding that the “testing phase” of the digital euro was scheduled to end in October.
On May 5, the ECB announced that it had established an “innovation platform” with 70 participants to collaborate on testing the digital euro project. The platform aims to simulate the proposed digital euro ecosystem, “in which the ECB provides the technical support and infrastructure for European intermediaries to develop innovative digital payment features and services at European level.”
The ECB digital euro tests are ongoing, and from the enthusiasm of Lagarde and Cipollone, they appear to be going well; the only barrier is legislative procrastination, with some EU lawmakers sceptical, citing common CBDC-related concerns about privacy, financial inclusion, and cybersecurity.
However, with a compromise and roadmap now reportedly agreed, including procedures that would give ministers a say on whether to launch and on holding limits, there should be no reason European Parliament can’t pick up the pace on the necessary legislation.
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Watch: Finding ways to use CBDC outside of digital currencies
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Source: https://coingeek.com/digital-euro-set-for-2029-after-ecb-eu-reach-accord/
