Lecture by Piero Cipollone, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, at the Annual Meeting of the Federation of Italian Cooperative Credit Banks (Federcasse)

Rome, 17 July 2026

Long ago, Aristotle himself noted^[1] how money played an essential role in society as an instrument that made it possible to establish a relationship between all things and make them commensurate. But money itself is the by-product of a convention, the expression of a social agreement: it holds its value because people trust it will be accepted tomorrow as it is today. And this social agreement is enshrined in law. Without it, money would be just a simple piece of metal, a scrap of paper or a string of code.

That’s why Aristotle referred to money as “nomisma”, or the expression of the law (“nomos”). Today, the law grants legal tender status to money issued by the central bank. In other words, it must be accepted at full face value to settle any payment due. This in turn constitutes the anchor for…