Interview with Piero Cipollone, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, conducted by Takerou Minami on 26 November 2025

4 December 2025

Why is the digital euro needed in Europe now?

The use of cash is declining because we cannot use it to pay digitally. This clearly limits people’s freedom to pay with central bank money – which currently only exists in the form of physical cash. If we do not complement it with a digital form of cash, we are, in a way, discriminating against central bank money at the retail level.

We are concerned about what would happen in an economy in which there is no access to money issued by the central bank at the retail level. We have not experienced such a situation for a long time. Central bank money is the anchor for the whole financial system, yet we do not currently have a single European solution for every type of digital payment that would allow all Europeans to pay anywhere in the euro area – the only European option that allows you to pay…