Christine Lagarde has announced that the infrastructure for the digital euro is complete and technically operational, with the project now in the hands of the European Parliament.
The European Central Bank has officially stated that the digital euro project has completed its preparatory phase and now awaits legislative approval from EU institutions.
Speaking at the ECB’s year-end press conference on December 18, ECB President Christine Lagarde stressed that, from a technological standpoint, everything is ready to implement the European digital currency.
“We have done our work, we have carried the water,” Lagarde noted. “But it’s now for the European Council and certainly later on for the European Parliament to identify whether the Commission proposal is satisfactory, how it can be transformed into a piece of legislation or amended.”
Implementation timeline
Last September, ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone provided a realistic estimate, placing the operational launch around mid-2029, calling it “a fair and reasonable assessment.”
Cipollone also highlighted that “discussion at the level of member-states is going very well.”
With the preparatory infrastructure now completed, attention shifts to political institutions for formal authorization. “We place great hopes in the work that will be done in Parliament, once the Council has determined its views,” Lagarde added.
Stablecoins: no threat to monetary sovereignty
During the Q&A session, Lagarde addressed concerns around stablecoins, ruling out that they pose a threat to European monetary sovereignty when operating within the MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets) framework.
“We are lucky in Europe to have something that is called MiCAR,” Lagarde said. “It’s the legal framework within which instruments like stablecoins can work and can be supervised and can be regarded as safe.”
She described regulated stablecoins as “an alternative form of payment” that could offer specific advantages, while warning about potential risks linked to multi-currency issuance, which could expose reserves to vulnerabilities.
“So on that particular area, I think that we need to be extremely attentive to what the potential risks are for the system itself and for the holders of stablecoins,” she stressed.
Complementing cash
Lagarde clarified that the ECB does not seek to impose a model for the digital euro, but rather “to make sure that in the digital age, there is a currency that is the anchor of stability for the financial system.”
She reaffirmed the ECB’s commitment to keeping cash widely available, emphasizing that the digital euro is designed to complement—not replace—physical money. “In addition to making sure that it is user-friendly, not costly, fast, efficient, private, that it can work online, offline,” she noted.
