At the Baltic digital euro conference in Tallinn on 29 September 2025, Piero Cipollone, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank (ECB), emphasized the strategic importance of the digital euro for Europe’s economic and financial sovereignty. He described the euro as more than a currency—a symbol of unity, shared destiny, and stability—and highlighted the ECB’s role in safeguarding this foundation.
Cipollone argued that as digital payments increasingly replace cash, Europe risks becoming dependent on non-European payment systems, threatening both competition and monetary autonomy. The digital euro, he explained, would preserve Europeans’ freedom to choose how they pay, strengthen local payment providers, and create a secure, standardized infrastructure across the euro area.
The digital euro is designed with resilience in mind: it will operate on a distributed infrastructure, function offline, and include a dedicated app to ensure continuity even during system failures or cyberattacks. Cipollone stressed that these features reflect a collective European effort, incorporating expertise from multiple countries, including the Baltic States, to ensure both security and interoperability.
Ultimately, the digital euro is framed not only as a financial innovation but also as a political statement of European sovereignty. By providing a reliable, universally accepted form of central bank money for the digital age, it aims to strengthen Europe’s unity, economic autonomy, and resilience in an increasingly fragmented and digital world.
