European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said on Thursday that the central bank has completed its technical and preparatory work on the digital euro and that it is now up to the political institutions to act. The project, which aims to create a public digital means of payment, is under review by the European Council and the European Parliament.
Her remarks came during the ECB’s last press conference of the year, where policymakers left eurozone key interest rates unchanged. Lagarde reaffirmed the ECB’s commitment to a meeting-by-meeting approach to interest rate decisions, saying they will be based on “incoming economic and financial data”, the inflation outlook and how effectively policy is working.
“We are not pre-committing to a particular interest rate path,” Lagarde said, adding that inflation remains on track to return to the ECB’s 2% target by 2028. Revised projections show headline inflation averaging 2.1% in 2025 and dipping below target in 2026 and 2027 before rising to 2020%.
While monetary policy remains stable, Lagarde pointed to 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 is the anchor of stability for the financial system,” she said. The ECB also called on the EU institutions to quickly adopt the digital euro regulation.
ECB board member Piero Cipollone has also said that a digital euro could ensure continuity of payments during cyber attacks or blackouts 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 under Europe’s Markets in Crypto-Assets, or MiCA, regulation.
