The European Central Bank has published the results of a public consultation on a potential digital euro, while the institution is preparing to decide whether to formally study this initiative. On Wednesday 14 April, the ECB announced that the public consultation on the digital euro it had launched on 20 October last year received more than 8,200 responses. The results were published and the largest contributions came from Germany (47%), Italy (15%) and France (11%).
Privacy – according to the report – is considered the most important feature of a digital euro by both citizens and individuals professionals participating in the consultation, in particular traders and freelancers. Other characteristics were also particularly appreciated, such as speed of international payments; safety, usability and protection. Most of the citizens and professionals interviewed believe that digital euro payments should be integrated into existing payment solutions or products. thus integrating them with existing banking solutions. The overwhelming majority of citizens (73%), in fact, see a role for intermediaries, with a role in the introduction of innovative services, in the search for efficiency solutions in general, as well as to ensure adequate interfacing with current payments and provide information on the use of the digital euro.
The report underlines the consideration that: “Simplicity of use is especially important to ensure that all segments of the population can use a retail payment solution such as the digital euro, with the aim of fostering the participation of all citizens and businesses in the increasingly digital economy. The Eurosystem finds this aspect of the design of a digital euro to be especially important, and participants in the public consultation were therefore asked to provide their input on this “
The central bank could use several instruments to manage the quantity of digital euro in circulation (such as quantity limits or tiered remuneration), ensuring that the transmission of monetary policy would not be affected by shifts of large amounts of commercial bank money to holdings of digital EUR. In this regard, the vast majority of citizens agree that the amount of digital euro in circulation should be limited. That need for either holding limits or tiered remuneration, or a combination of both, to control the amount of digital euro in circulation, while one in ten refer to spending limits.
A total of 7,761 citizens participated in the consultation, certainly a small number considering that around 447 million people live in the Europe of 27 states.
