tl;dr
Opposition to the European Central Bank's (ECB) digital euro project has grown following the recent crash of the ECB's payment system, TARGET2 (T2), in late February. Members of the European Parliament, including German MP Markus Ferber, have raised concerns about the ECB's readiness to launch a dig...
Opposition to the European Central Bank's (ECB) digital euro project has grown following the recent crash of the ECB's payment system, TARGET2 (T2), in late February. Members of the European Parliament, including German MP Markus Ferber, have raised concerns about the ECB's readiness to launch a digital euro in light of the system outage. The ECB has been advocating for a digital euro as a response to US President Donald Trump's support for dollar-pegged private sector stablecoins, with ECB board member Piero Cipollone expressing concerns that Trump's executive order on crypto could drive people away from traditional banks.
Vocal opposition to the European Central Bank’s (ECB) digital euro project reportedly swelled after the institution’s payment system crashed last month. TARGET2 (T2), the ECB’s real-time gross settlement system, went down in late February, which prevented payments from being processed for several hours. Now, some members of the European Parliament, a legislative body of the European Union (EU), are pointing to the crash as potential evidence that the ECB isn’t ready to launch a digital euro, per a new report from Reuters. German MP Markus Ferber, a member of the European People’s Party, says the outage was “a blow to the ECB’s credibility.” “People will ask legitimate questions how the ECB will be able to run a digital euro when they cannot even keep their day-to-day operations running smoothly.” The European Union’s central bank has been pushing for a digital euro to counter US President Donald Trump’s embrace of dollar-pegged private sector stablecoins. ECB board member Piero Cipollone said at a conference in January that Trump’s new executive order on crypto could drive people away from banks. “I guess the key word here (in Trump’s executive order) is worldwide. This solution, you all know, further disintermediates banks as they lose fees, they lose clients… That’s why we need a digital euro.”