Digital Euro

Frequently Questioned Answers (FQAs) #

The European Central Bank (ECB) is working on the “digital euro”, an envisioned retail central bank digital currency for the Euro area. In this work, we take a closer look at the FAQs on the digital euro, which provides answers to 27 frequently asked questions about the digital euro, and other published documents by the ECB on the topic. We question the provided answers in the version of 5 March 2026 based on our analysis of the digital euro design in terms of privacy, technical feasibility, risks, costs and utility.

In particular, we discuss the following key findings:

• (KF1) Central monitoring of all online digital euro transactions by the ECB threatens privacy even more than contemporary digital payment methods with segregated account databases.
• (KF2) The ECB’s envisioned concept of a secure offline version of the digital euro offering full anonymity is in strong conflict with the actual history of hardware security breaches and mathematical evidence against it.
• (KF3) The legal and financial liabilities for the various parties involved remain unclear.
• (KF4) The design lacks well-specified economic incentives for operators as well as a discussion of its economic impact on merchants.
• (KF5) The ECB fails to identify tangible benefits the digital euro would create for society, in particular given that the online component of the proposed infrastructure mainly duplicates existing payment systems.
• (KF6) The design process has been exclusionary, with critical decisions being set in stone before public consultations. Alternative and open design ideas have not even been discussed by the ECB.

Citation #

If you want to cite this work, you may also refer to the indexed version at arXiv.org:

@misc{digitaleurofrequentlyasked,
      title={Digital Euro: Frequently Asked Questions Revisited},
      author={Joe Cannataci and Benjamin Fehrensen and Mikolai Gütschow and Özgür Kesim and Bernd Lucke},
      year={2026},
      eprint={2601.18644},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={cs.CY},
      url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.18644},
}