Digital Euro bill leaked - Will Europe have a Central Bank Digital Currency? đź‘€
What is it?
đź‘€ A draft law for the Digital Euro, a Central Bank Digital Currency for the EU, has been leaked. It would be illegal to pay interest on the new digital Euro or charge for using or moving it. It is designed to replicate cash and work offline, like withdrawing bank notes at an ATM. Shops would have to accept the Euro and would not be programmable. There are doubts about whether the bill could pass through the Parliament, but the Commission would publicize a draft.
My analysis 👇
🤔 This is the start of the debate, not the end. A draft bill that hasn't made it near the floor is far from something passable. The imperative has shifted from worries about private companies like Facebook threatening the role of the Euro. The concern is G7 vs. BRICS currencies; notably, China has a CBDC. I wouldn't expect a Digital Euro to be live and available to consumers this decade.
🤔 The temptation with digital is to create traceable money. The criticism of CBDCs is that the privacy and anonymity of cash would be lost. This bill attempts to address that by assuring it will be private, but like taking money to a branch, banks would play an essential role in identifying where the cash came from.
🤔 We need a cash-like thing for the digital economy. Digital money that works offline is valuable. We have physical money that can work offline, which allows the vulnerable and unbanked to operate in society. The future will have more digital and not less, so having something to replicate that function of money for the marginalized is useful. A nation-state is as good as anyone at providing digital cash since they already do it with physical cash.
🤔 Do G7 countries need a CBDC? China's CBDC is an alternative to the big tech payment rails from Tencent and Alipay. China's policy objective is to ensure it can manage and plan the economy centrally and is less concerned about individual privacy. That's not an objective the G7 shares, nor is it required. There are already multiple payment rails in the West. Adding another could be useful, however.
🤔 Not having programmability ruins the best feature of digital cash. Smart money would unleash innovation, but perhaps there's a way to achieve policy objectives and enable innovation without a CBDC? The UK is researching providing APIs to the central bank payment infrastructure to provide a "CBDC" in a sense. This would bring the benefits equivalent to "FedNow access" for banks and private sector payments companies. In turn, these companies could provide true digital cash for consumers via these APIs. You could call that a CBDC, but it looks a lot more like APIs for others to distribute digital cash within guardrails created by the central bank. It wouldn't require a Blockchain, it could be private, but it's also very early research.