🇪🇺 The Digital Euro Is a Public Good — Or It Is Nothing

70 European academics warn Brussels: don’t hollow out the digital euro.

This week, 70 European academics issued an open letter urging lawmakers to resist financial-sector lobbying and defend the digital euro as core public infrastructure, not a diluted compromise. The initiative was led by the Sustainable Finance Lab.

[ sustainablefinancelab.n… ]

Why the alarm?

Because much of Europe’s digital payments stack is already foreign-owned. 

• In 13 euro-area countries, basic retail payments rely entirely on international card schemes.

• Cash is declining.

• Private platforms are scaling.

• Control over payments—data, resilience, crisis readiness—is drifting outside Europe.

A digital euro issued by the European Central Bank can fix this—but only if it works:

• usable online and offline

• privacy by design

• universal access, including the unbanked

• meaningful holding limits so it’s a real store of value

Strip these out and the project survives in name only—while dependence deepens.

With a 2026 vote approaching in the European Parliament, the signatories pose a stark choice: assert democratic control over money in the digital age—or allow others to control it for Europe.

Public money in a digital economy is not optional.