The European Central Bank is casting its planned digital euro trial as a question of control over the plumbing of European commerce, not merely a technical upgrade. Executive Board member Piero Cipollone said the project could give the euro area a payments backbone it owns, reducing its exposure to providers based outside the bloc.
In an interview with the Italian publication Milano Finance that the ECB released on Saturday, Cipollone argued that recent shocks in other sectors offer a cautionary tale for money movement. “In recent years Europe has learned that, for some essential services, we cannot rely only on third parties,” he said, pointing to energy and, more recently, defense. “And the same is true for payments.”
The pilot is scheduled to start next year and will process actual transactions rather than simulations, with staff at the ECB and the national central banks carrying them out. Preparations involve 36 market operators, seven of them Italian, and the central bank is extending invitations to e-commerce and mobile-commerce companies so the testing reflects how merchants and consumers would actually use the system.
Cipollone’s core concern is operational: the ECB is responsible for keeping payments running smoothly, and that duty becomes harder to discharge when vital components sit under foreign governance. “The smooth functioning of payment systems is one of our responsibilities,” he said. “If we are critically dependent on third parties, it’s not easy to ensure this smooth functioning.”
He was careful to define what sovereignty does not mean. Keeping outside providers out is not the goal, he said. “It means having the power to choose and knowing that, for an essential service like payments, Europe can also rely on its own strength.”
The argument rests on a figure he first aired in a public lecture in Latvia in April: two-thirds of card transactions in the euro area are governed by companies headquartered outside Europe. That concentration, in his telling, amounts to a strategic vulnerability, and a European-controlled digital currency could dilute it.
Legislation remains the binding constraint. The ECB’s Governing Council cannot formally decide to issue a digital euro until negotiations in Brussels wrap up, and Cipollone said he hopes the regulation clears by the end of the year, which would open the door to that decision.
ItemDetailPilot timingNext yearTransaction typeReal payments by ECB and national central bank staffMarket operators in preparations36, including seven from ItalyAdditional participants soughtE-commerce and mobile-commerce operatorsPrior warningApril lecture in Latvia on card-market dependenceIssuance triggerConclusion of legislative talks in Brussels
Note: Details drawn from Cipollone’s Milano Finance interview and prior public remarks.
The sequencing matters for anyone building or investing around the project. A successful pilot would demonstrate that the technology works under realistic conditions, but it would not by itself authorize a launch; legal authority and the final regulatory framework still stand between testing and any rollout.
For payment processors, merchants and platform operators, the practical questions are integration, usability and reliability, and live testing is designed to surface them. For the ECB, the pilot doubles as evidence for its case that European-controlled rails can deliver the dependability it says is harder to guarantee when critical functions are governed elsewhere.
What remains unresolved is how pilot findings would be folded into a final issuance blueprint, and how the Brussels talks will settle the project’s scope, requirements and timetable.