ECB Official Says Digital Euro Will Offer More Privacy Than Bank Transfers

A senior European Central Bank official said the digital euro will provide stronger privacy protections than existing bank transfers, pushing back against surveillance concerns that have shadowed the project for years. 

ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone said the Eurosystem will be structurally unable to link individual users to their transactions, whether made online or offline.

Central Bank Says System Design Prevents User Tracking

Cipollone said in a recent interview that the digital euro’s technical structure would prevent the Eurosystem from identifying which specific individual made a given transaction. He contrasted that design with conventional bank transfers, in which the parties involved in a transaction can see each other’s full details.

“The digital euro guarantees the maximum level of privacy that current technology can offer,” Cipollone said.

Cipollone said offline digital euro payments would function similarly to cash, with transaction details visible only to the payer and the recipient. In online transactions, he said, banks would be able to identify users only for anti-money-laundering compliance purposes, not for general transaction monitoring.

Civil Society Groups Question Reliance on Institutional Promises

Cipollone’s comments follow sustained public skepticism toward the digital euro and other central bank digital currencies more broadly, driven by concerns that such systems could give governments visibility into how citizens spend money. 

Austrian digital rights group Epicenter.works and other civil society organizations raised similar concerns in a joint statement earlier this month.

The groups said the digital euro’s current privacy protections rely too heavily on institutional assurances rather than technical enforcement. They argued that legislative commitments can be weakened during implementation, reinterpreted by courts, or altered entirely after a system is already in place, making binding technical safeguards more durable than policy promises alone.

That distinction, between privacy built into the system’s architecture and privacy guaranteed only by institutional commitment, sits at the center of the ongoing dispute between the ECB and privacy advocates. 

Cipollone’s remarks frame the digital euro’s privacy protections as structural rather than merely promised, though independent technical verification of that claim was not addressed in his comments.

ECB Rejects Claims the Digital Euro Would Replace Cash

Cipollone also addressed concerns that the digital euro is designed to eventually phase out physical cash. 

He pointed to the ECB’s recently launched public consultation on redesigning euro banknotes as evidence the institution intends to keep cash in circulation alongside the new digital currency. He argued that a redesign process would make little sense if cash were being phased out.

ECB President Christine Lagarde has also told European citizens that the digital euro and physical cash are intended to coexist rather than one replacing the other.

Rollout Remains Years Away Despite Recent Legislative Progress

The European Parliament approved the digital euro regulation last month, clearing a key legislative step for the project. The digital euro itself is scheduled for rollout in 2029, meaning the currency remains in a pre-launch phase even as its legal framework advances.

The multi-year gap between legislative approval and actual rollout leaves significant time for the ECB to finalize the technical implementation civil society groups are pressing it to make binding rather than aspirational. 

Whether the privacy protections Cipollone described will be enshrined in enforceable technical standards, rather than left to institutional discretion, remains an open question as the project moves toward its 2029 target.