ECB's Piero Cipollone speaks on central bank money for the digital era

The European Central Bank published on June 25 the text of a speech by Executive Board member Piero Cipollone titled "Central bank money for the digital era."

The document was released in the ECB's key speeches series as a PDF, per the ECB's press page. The material available contains no further detail on the content of the remarks; the venue and audience are likewise unrecorded in the feed material.

The title places the remarks within the ECB's continuing public argument over the role of central bank money, including the digital euro project, though the speech's actual treatment of that subject is not established here. What is on the record is the publication, the speaker and the title, per the ECB; the substance rests with the published document.

Background

Cipollone, an Italian economist and former deputy governor of the Bank of Italy, joined the ECB's six-member Executive Board in 2023 and holds the portfolio covering payments and the digital euro — the ECB's project to issue a central bank digital currency for the euro area. The project moved into a preparation phase in late 2023, covering rulebook drafting and provider selection, and its ultimate launch depends on EU legislation that must pass the European Parliament and member-state governments.

"Central bank money" — cash and balances held at the central bank — is the anchor of the monetary system, and ECB officials have repeatedly argued that as cash use declines and payments migrate to private digital platforms, the public should retain access to a digital form of it. That argument, and pushback over privacy, cost and the risk of drawing deposits away from banks, has made the digital euro one of the most contested files in European finance — the standing debate to which a speech under this title would speak.

What comes next

The remarks' substance is a matter for the published PDF. On the project the title gestures toward, the procedural gate remains legislative: the digital euro cannot be issued without an EU legal framework, so watch the file's progress in the European Parliament and Council, alongside further ECB communications in the same series.