The second phase, the preparation phase, for the digital euro will start on November 1st and will initially last two years. This was announced by the ECB following today’s decision by the Board of Governors according to which this period “will involve the finalization of the manual of rules for the digital euro and the selection of suppliers who could develop the necessary platform and infrastructure. In this furthermore, tests and experiments will be conducted to create a digital euro”. After two years the governing council will decide whether to move to the next phase of preparations, creating the conditions for a possible issuance.
“We need to prepare our currency for the future,” he said Christine Lagarde, president of the ECB. “We envision a digital euro as a digital form of cash that can be used for free for any digital payment and that meets the highest standards of confidentiality. A digital euro would complement cash, which will always be available, so that no one is left behind.” “In light of citizens’ growing preference for digital payments, we should stand ready to issue a digital euro alongside cash,” said Fabio Panetta, Member of the ECB Executive Board and Chair of the High-Level Task Force for a Digital Euro. “A digital euro would increase the efficiency of European payments and contribute to Europe’s strategic autonomy.”
The EU privacy authority: “Data protection is good with the digital euro”
The proposed EU regulation on the digital euro is good with respect to data protection and the fact that an offline mode is provided to minimize data processing. And “big favor” with respect to the fact that you can always choose whether to pay in digital euros or in cash. The European Data Protection Board and the European Data Protection Supervisor stated this in a joint opinion on the proposal. However, they ask to clarify how the identification of users of the digital euro will be processed. And to evaluate whether the single access point to the digital euro is necessary and proportionate, or there are technical measures for decentralized storage of identifiers.
Under the proposed regulation, the ECB and national central banks can establish a single point of access to verify that the amount of digital euros held by each user does not exceed the maximum amount allowed (a ‘holding limit’). With respect to the fraud detection and prevention mechanism, the opinion of the Edpb and Gepd is that it lacks predictability. With a processing of personal data within the framework of the mechanism by the ECB of payment service providers that “is not clearly defined”. It is therefore recommended that the need for this be demonstrated and that less invasive measures be considered with respect to the impact on data protection. The role of the ECB, national central banks and payment service providers in this context will also need to be defined, according to key data protection principles. The introduction of a ‘privacy threshold’ for online transactions, below which they should not be tracked, is then “strongly” recommended.
Read the full article on ANSA.it
2023-10-18 14:24:00
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