The ECB lawmakers favored Cipollone’s candidacy to steer forward the agenda of a digital Euro to reinforce the public money infrastructure amid the mainstream adoption of digital assets.
The European Union is preparing to roll out its Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) in a few years to keep its economic outlook competitive amid changing puzzles of geopolitics. Blockchain technology has been identified as a key to a successful digital Euro to enable retail CBDCs along the way. In the latest move, former Italian central banker, Piero Cipollone, largely convinced the EU lawmakers why he is the best candidate to steer forward a digital euro to the next level. Moreover, the lawmakers passed a non-binding vote of 30-3 to approve Cipollone’s bid to replace Fabio Panetta as the Supremo of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) at the European Central Bank (ECB).
Cipollone on Digital Euro
During the EU parliamentary hearing on Monday, Cipollone highlighted that he will stick to the existing guidelines set by the ECD on a digital euro. Furthermore, the ECB has been conducting several initiatives geared toward developing an interoperable, secure, and versatile digital Euro to compete with other currencies like China which has already filed out its digital Yuan to millions of users.
“A digital euro would reinforce the ability to pay with public money throughout Europe with a technology and infrastructure that is based in Europe,” Cippollone told members of the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee.
Cippollone further highlighted that the digital Euro will support offline functionality, accessibility, and excellent solutions geared towards protecting user privacy. Moreover, a lot of respondents sampled by the ECB indicated that security and interoperability are of great importance to ensure mainstream adoption.
ECB and the Digital Euro
According to François Villeroy de Galhau, the current governor of the Bank of France, the need for the European market to adopt a digital Euro has exploded in the recent past as investors seek alternative methods to settle transactions. Blockchain technology has already proved that the settlement of transactions can be cheap, secure, and fast without errors. Moreover, the Bitcoin network has been adopted for over a decade and has grown to a trillion-dollar industry with high prospects of overthrowing Gold and traditional banking systems.
“The Eurosystem has started exploring new technologies for the settlement of central bank money, including the issuance of a first type of tokenized CBDC,” Villeroy de Galhau noted during an event in Paris. “The eligibility criteria and the call of interest will be published in the coming weeks and experiments will be rolled out over the course of next year, including trials with real transactions.”
The plans for a wholesale CBDC are expected to be laid out in the coming weeks in a bid to free over $100 billion per year in automating back-office processes.
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