European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said on Thursday that the central bank had completed its technical and preparatory work on the digital euro and that it was now up to political institutions to act. The project, which aims to create a public digital payment method, is currently being examined by the European Council and the European Parliament.
His remarks came during the ECB’s final press conference of the year, where policymakers left the euro zone’s key interest rates unchanged. Lagarde reaffirmed the ECB’s commitment to a meeting-by-meeting approach to rate decisions, saying they will be based on “incoming economic and financial data”, the inflation outlook and the effectiveness of policy.
“We do not commit in advance to any particular rate trajectory,” Lagarde said, adding that inflation remained on track to return to the ECB’s 2% target by 2028. The revised projections show that headline inflation will average 2.1% in 2025 and fall below the target in 2026 and 2027 before rebounding to 2.0% in 2028.
Even if monetary policy remains stable, Lagarde highlighted the digital euro as a strategic priority for Europe’s financial future.
“Our ambition is to ensure that in the digital age there is a currency that provides the anchor for the stability of the financial system,” she said. The ECB also called on European institutions to quickly adopt the digital euro regulation.
ECB board member Piero Cipollone also said a digital euro could guarantee continuity of payments in the event of cyberattacks or power outages that disrupt traditional banking infrastructure.
The digital euro is expected to launch in the second half of 2026, in line with the timeline of other euro-backed stablecoin initiatives regulated by the European Crypto-Asset Markets, or MiCA, regulations.
