EU lawmakers have expressed doubts about launching a digital euro

A failure in the ECB’s payment system raised new doubts among the parliamentarians in the ability of the regulator to implement a project of national digital currency (CBDC). He writes about it Reuters.

Problems in Target 2 (T2) at the end of last month led to delays in transactions per day. The cause was an error in the initial diagnosis of failure of ECB technicians.

Representatives of the regulator said that the digital euro will be closer to the architecture to the TIPS Instant Payment System, which “processes millions of small transfers around the clock and has proven itself as reliable.” According to the Central Bank, the TIPS failure on the incident’s day was insignificant.

Four of the eight groups of the European Parliament expressed concern for the incident. In their view, it calls into question the reliability of the ECB in the context of digital euro development, which should work as a new payment system throughout the Eurozone.

The CBDC is planned by October 2025, subject to the adoption of the necessary legislation, said the head of the regulator Christine Lagarde. She noted that all technical and legal work is conducted with the sight of this term.

According to Lagarde, the implementation of the project requires the consent of all key participants: the European Parliament, the EU Council and the European Commission. She stressed that the launch of a digital euro “is required both at wholesale and retail level.”

Recall that in February at OMFIF found a decrease in the interest of the Central Bank in the CBDC. According to the researchers, the share of the CB, which reported less interest in the issue of digital national currency, has increased from zero in 2022 to 15%.

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