The European Central Bank’s programme to roll out a digital euro by 2029 has been met with resistance from EU lawmakers, as well as the banking industry as a whole.
Just before a European parliamentary hearing on the plan scheduled for 14 November 2025, financial institutions such as Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, and ING have cautioned that the digital euro could lead to undermine private sector payment systems. 14 financial institutions, including those previously mentioned, have partnered to establish a private sector rival to US payment companies, including Mastercard, Visa, and PayPal, with the service, Wero, being rolled out in 2024.
The clash between the ECB’s plan and the banking industry
Banks’ opinions on the European Central Bank (ECB) plan come just a few days after the governing council of the institution announced its decision to advance to the next phase of the digital euro project. The decision followed the successful completion of the preparation phase, introduced by the Eurosystem in November 2023, with the next phase aiming to ensure technical readiness for the first issuance.
However, now banks said that the current design of the retail digital euro mostly addresses the same use cases as private solutions, without necessarily providing any concise added value for customers. Additionally, according to previous reports, Fernando Navarrete, a MEP from Spain appointed by the European Parliament to assess the digital euro, underlined that the project should be substantially scaled down. He added that the digital euro should only be utilised instead of coins and banknotes for payments without internet or mobile connection, but not as a digital means of real-time payments for other transactions, as proposed by the ECB. In his report, Navarrete also mentioned that online payment capabilities could lead to a parallel payment ecosystem impeding private solutions from reaching pan-European scale.
Cited by the Financial Times, Navarrete highlighted that the private sector was closer than ever to establishing a competitive payment system. He added that a responsible policymaker approach should be to allow the framework to maximise the probability of this happening while also being prepared for an alternative option.
