The spread of Big Brother-style conspiracy theories, meanwhile, has forced policymakers to take extra precautions to reassure the public that authorities will not use the digital euro to snoop on people’s payment habits.
“You cannot disregard” the concern of “many millions of citizens,” Fernando Navarrete, the center-right MEP shepherding the bill through the Parliament, told POLITICO in November. “In China, it’s explicit that they wanted to build [a digital yuan] in order to increase control over the people. I’m scared of this.”
Navarrete, who hails from the European People’s Party, is highly skeptical of the initiative but is comfortable with the notion of an offline version of the digital euro that protects people’s privacy. “I’m not saying it will be used” for snooping, “but they know that the technology has potential,” he said.
On the contrary, consumer groups have praised the initiative, assuming the digital euro is safe, free, and private. Banks are far less enthusiastic. Especially, as they’ll be on the hook for distributing basic digital euro services to their clients at no extra cost — a bill that could amount to over €5 billion over four years, according to ECB estimates.
Bankers’ protests aside, the biggest obstacle facing the digital euro is countering conspiracy theories that the authorities will use the ECB’s project to control the populace — despite reassurances from the European Commission and the ECB.
The Commission’s original proposal and the ECB’s envisioned design for the project already prevent the central bank from matching people’s digital euro accounts with citizens’ personal data.