The European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs has supported a bill to introduce the digital euro, which will be an electronic form of money issued by the European Central Bank (ECB). The document was approved by 43 deputies with 14 votes against and one abstention.

The key innovation will be support for offline payments via a local storage on the device, which will be equated to cash: if the gadget is lost, funds on it will burn without recovery. To protect personal data when verifying transactions, zero disclosure evidence is planned. Banks, post offices, payment providers, and regulated crypto companies will distribute the asset. Basic services, such as opening an account and managing funds, would be free of charge, but citizens would have to limit the amount of digital euros they could hold to avoid withdrawing deposits from the banking system.

Before launching, the ECB should deploy infrastructure and conduct pilot tests, with particular attention to protecting offline mode from double spending. If the bill passes in 2026, the first transactions will start in mid-2027 and full release is expected in 2029. The project aims to reduce the eurozone’s dependence on non-European payment giants. In parallel, European banks (ING, UniCredit, BNP Paribas, and others) are promoting a private alternative - the Qivalis stablecoin, which is set to launch at the end of 2026, despite warnings from the ECB about risks to lending and monetary policy.