The ECON committee has cleared the European CBDC framework, opening the way for final negotiations toward a 2029 launch.
The European Parliament has taken a significant step toward introducing the digital euro. On Tuesday 23 June 2026, the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) approved the legal framework for the European Central Bank’s digital currency, simultaneously ordering the immediate launch of final “trilogue” negotiations between EU member states and the Parliament to settle the definitive legislation.
The vote closes three years of discussions between central banks and commercial lenders, which had raised concerns over potential deposit revenue losses. Commercial banks secured the inclusion of strict limits on the amount of digital euros citizens may hold in a digital wallet, to prevent a mass flight of liquidity from traditional accounts in the event of a crisis.
“Strengthening the resilience of payments in Europe has become a geopolitical necessity,” said Markus Ferber, a senior member of the ECON committee. “In a world shaped by geopolitical tensions, we can no longer accept that digital payments depend to a large extent on the goodwill of a handful of foreign providers,” he added. As Atlas21 has previously reported, Lagarde has long pushed the digital euro as a counterweight to dollar-denominated stablecoins, and Tuesday’s vote marks the first concrete institutional victory for that strategy.
The European vote comes within hours of the opposite move in the United States: the Senate passed a bill establishing a four-year ban on a federal CBDC, now awaiting a House vote and President Trump’s signature. The ECB’s pilot phase will last 12 months and will use a beta version to test the infrastructure in real-world scenarios with a selection of merchants and payment service providers. “The euro must work in your pocket and on your phone,” Ferber concluded.
