Digital Euro talks stall as Parliament drowns in amendments

More than 1,400 amendments have been tabled on the EU’s digital euro legislation, a striking sign of how far lawmakers remain from a political compromise on one of the bloc’s most consequential financial projects.

The proposals, lodged in the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, expose deep divisions over the purpose, governance and cost of a potential digital form of the euro. Several lawmakers complained during recent ECON exchanges that the proposal reached Parliament late and without sufficient political groundwork, leaving negotiators to resolve fundamental questions under mounting time pressure rather than refining technical details.

The committee is scheduled to vote on the file on 5 May, though the scale of disagreement makes further delays or a heavily qualified mandate likely. Below, we break down the main fault lines now shaping the debate.

Rapporteur calls for realistic compromise

Addressing colleagues in the ECON committee, rapporteur Fernando Navarrete (EPP) called on political groups to move beyond entrenched positions and coalesce around a workable compromise to strengthen Europe’s payments resilience. He described the digital euro as a complex but strategic file, shaped by a large number of amendments and competing political priorities.

Navarrete underscored that the digital euro should be conceived not as a single, all-purpose instrument, but as part of a broader payments ecosystem. Its role, he argued, is to ensure continuity in the event of cyberattacks, network failures or external dependencies, without imposing unsustainable costs on merchants or users.

He set out two clear parameters. An offline digital euro should function as a digital equivalent of cash, and access to funds should remain mediated by commercial banks rather than through direct central bank accounts, an approach he said is essential to protecting privacy and financial stability.

Socialists push legal clarity and public neutrality

For the Socialists and Democrats, shadow rapporteur Nikos Papandreou of Greece argued that the lack of agreement on the digital euro’s legal tender status lies at the heart of the current deadlock. Competing models, he said, have blurred the political objective of the project.

Papandreou warned against equating payments infrastructure with sovereignty, which he said requires accountability and public control. He pointed to earlier assessments by the European Central Bank and the German Bundestag suggesting that a digital euro could bolster financial stability, including by reducing the risk of bank runs.

He criticised amendments from the EPP that reopen debates on cash and ATM access, areas where cross-party support for protection is broad. The digital euro, he insisted, should not become a revenue-generating instrument. Public money must remain neutral, interoperable across wallets and services, and free of charges for both consumers and merchants.

Patriots question costs and central bank capacity

The Patriots for Europe group adopted a more sceptical tone. Shadow rapporteur Auke Zijlstra of the Netherlands questioned the ECB’s capacity to manage a project of this scale and criticised the lack of clarity around costs, citing estimates of up to €18 billion.

Zijlstra argued that several national payment systems already operate more efficiently and warned that a new European layer could ultimately shift costs onto taxpayers. He also challenged the ECB’s potential role as a market actor and expressed frustration over the absence of tangible outcomes from long-running investigations into Visa and Mastercard. Against that backdrop, the group does not support the creation of a retail digital wallet for citizens.

The Left frames payments as a sovereignty test

For the Left, represented by Gaetano Pedullà of Italy, the digital euro was described as a structural project whose political context has shifted dramatically since 2023. Europe’s reliance on U.S. payment networks, particularly Visa and Mastercard, has become the central concern, raising fears of payment disruptions, account freezes or card cancellations.

Pedullà argued that only a fully public solution can guarantee monetary and strategic autonomy. He cited the history of Visa Europe, which was formally separated and later reabsorbed, as evidence of the fragility of hybrid arrangements. The Left has proposed scrapping fees on small digital euro transactions and introducing a free payment card to ensure access for citizens without smartphones or bank accounts.

The underlying question, he said, is whether payments should remain dominated by private operators or anchored in a transparent and universally accessible public instrument.

Renew and Greens warn against inaction

Renew Europe’s shadow rapporteur, Gilles Boyer of France, backed the case for a sovereign European payment system while acknowledging the project’s complexity and cost. In the current geopolitical climate, he warned, doing nothing could prove more expensive than acting.

For the Greens, Damian Boeselager of Germany reiterated support for an inclusive payment option accepted across the EU, both online and offline. An offline digital euro, he argued, could help preserve cash by enabling peer-to-peer transfers and should be treated as a public good delivered by the ECB alongside designated national payment providers.

The Greens are calling for a simple design, lower costs and clear accountability, while preserving room for private competition elsewhere in the payments market.

Shared concerns, unresolved divisions

In his closing remarks, rapporteur Fernando Navarrete pointed to areas of emerging convergence, notably broad agreement on reducing excessive dependence on Visa and Mastercard, the need for simple and affordable payment solutions, interoperability, and guaranteed access to payments regardless of device ownership. There is also wide cross-party alignment around one clear boundary: the digital euro should not enable programmable payments.

At the same time, fundamental divisions persist over the project’s governance and the appropriate degree of public intervention in the payments market. Those unresolved political choices help explain the unprecedented volume of amendments and suggest that the ECON vote scheduled for 5 May will be less about fine-tuning technical design than about defining the long-term balance between public money, private actors and Europe’s strategic autonomy.