In stop #286 I told you about a vote that was unimportant for the legislative process of the digital euro itself, but very important as a signal of the draconian majority in favor of the European CBDC. It concerned amendments to the Resolution on the ECB report, in which the digital euro was defined as “essential for European monetary sovereignty.”

But where do we stand with the bureaucratic process that should make the digital euro actually launchable by the European Central Bank?

The law that interests us is the Regulation establishing the digital euro proposed by the Commission on June 28, 2023 (official reference: COM/2023/369), which since then has followed a precise path worth recalling step by step.

Last December 19, the Council of the EU — which represents the national governments — adopted its negotiating position. Translated: the twenty governments of the eurozone are already in agreement.

What is still missing is the vote of the European Parliament, which represents the citizens: on June 23, after a postponement from the original date of May 5, the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) will vote on its position, and immediately afterward the text will go to the plenary. At that point the Trilogue will begin, that is the three-way negotiation between Commission, Council and Parliament to harmonize the two positions and arrive at a single text. Considering that Council and Parliament are both in favor, it will be a fast trilogue. Final adoption of the Regulation presumably by the end of 2026, at the latest the beginning of 2027.

The ECB, meanwhile, is not waiting. The preparation phase closed in October 2025 and already on November 28, 2025 the Eurosystem formally opened the selection of the payment service providers, the merchants and the internal personnel who will take part in the pilot. Piero Cipollone, the board member responsible for the project, confirmed that the finalization of the partners will come in June. The same month as the ECON vote, which brings us to an interesting coincidence: those who will materially operate the digital euro will be known even before the law is final.

The full-scale timeline, according to ECB documents:

• mid-2027: launch of the twelve-month pilot with a subset of partner banks;
• 2028: extension of the pilot and integration with the commercial banking system;
• 2029: actual issuance, digital euro operational for citizens.

The costs, again from ECB estimates and from the committee hearings:

• 1.3 billion euros of development borne by the ECB;
• 320 million euros per year of operating costs at full scale;
• between 4 and 5.8 billion in investments required of the commercial banking system to integrate the digital euro into their systems.

All of this to do something that Bancomat, Postepay, Satispay, Apple Pay, Google Pay and SEPA instant transfers already do.

The digital euro to come

The package is made up of three legislative proposals: Regulation on the digital euro, Regulation for EU countries outside the eurozone and Regulation on the legal tender of cash. The Commission understood that proposing only the CBDC would have been political suicide and packaged the whole thing as “we give you the digital euro but we protect cash.” What interests us most among the three packages, obviously, is the first one, and among all the points it addresses, there are four that are most relevant.

Legal tender and mandatory acceptance: the digital euro will be legal tender in all 20 eurozone countries. Merchants will be required by law to accept it. There is only one exception: micro-enterprises with fewer than 10 employees and less than two million euros in annual turnover, which already do not accept digital payments. In essence, if you have a POS you will also have to accept the digital euro.

Who issues it, who distributes it: the ECB issues, the commercial banks distribute. The banks will be required by law to offer a digital euro wallet as a basic service. For those who do not have a bank account, it will be available through a designated universal provider (in Italy, Poste). The banks will distribute it free of charge to the citizen and will recoup the cost from merchants.

Holding limit: each citizen will be able to hold a limited quantity of digital euros in their own wallet. The exact figure will be decided politically by Council and Parliament and reviewed at least every two years: today the figure most insistently mentioned is three thousand euros. The official justification for the limit is financial stability. In the event of a banking crisis, citizens could move all their deposits from the commercial banks (which have default risk) to the ECB wallet (which does not). The banks would fail due to a flight of deposits. So the 3,000 euros are a concession to the banking system to avoid a bank run.

Privacy on two levels, online and offline: online all payments are visible to the payment service provider. The data go to the ECB in pseudonymized form, with unique identifiers “traceable to the user when needed.” Substantial traceability: equal to that of a standard bank account. Plus the banks’ archives, plus the European anti-money-laundering window. Offline, two devices near each other exchange digital euros via NFC. During the transaction no third party sees anything, but a) the limits per single offline payment will be tight, probably under 150-200 euros and b) as soon as your device goes back online, the data of the offline transactions are uploaded.

What has not yet been decided

As mentioned, there are still several unresolved points: holding limit, limit for offline transactions, technical specifications of the wallets, interoperability standards, fees charged to merchants, etc.

The EU Parliament will vote on the general framework, but the parameters that will decide how much and how you will be surveilled will be set by an unelected technocracy, after the law has passed.

Once the Regulation is approved, it will take only a future amendment to lower the micro-enterprise exemption from ten to five employees, to raise the holding limit from 3,000 to 30,000 euros “to facilitate adoption,” to eliminate the offline mode “for anti-money-laundering needs,” to authorize programmable payments as “smart payments,” to make the data no longer pseudonymized for “security needs.” None of this will require a new vote of the European Parliament.

Stay well clear of it

To you who are reading the three-hundredth episode of Bitcoin Train, I don’t need to explain what it means to have money that asks no permission, you already know it. The digital euro is not a technological novelty. Bancomat, Postepay, Satispay, Apple Pay and instant transfers already do everything. The digital euro is the creation, out of nothing, of a unified payment channel, managed by a single central authority, with direct visibility over every online transaction of the 340 million citizens of the eurozone, and with the technical ability to program the currency as soon as a future Parliament decides it is appropriate.

We have an advantage, however. The digital euro will arrive in 2029. Bitcoin is here now. Take your bitcoin off the exchanges, practice self-custody, learn to run a node. Teach your children that the money the State forces you to use is not the money your family deserves to accumulate. If we act right away, we can protect a good slice of the next generation.

The responsibility is ours.