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 political institutions to act. The project, which aims to create a public digital payment method, is being reviewed by the European Council and the European Parliament.
His comments came during the ECB’s final press conference of the year, where authorities left key eurozone 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 outlook for inflation and how effectively policies are working.
“We are not pre-committing to a particular 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 will average 2.1% in 2025 and fall below the target in 2026 and 2027 before rebounding to 2.0% in 2028.
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 the stability of the financial system,” he said. The ECB also called on EU institutions to act quickly to adopt digital euro regulation.
ECB board member Piero Cipollone also said a digital euro could ensure continuity of payments during cyber attacks or power outages that disrupt traditional banking infrastructure.
The digital euro is expected to launch in the second half of 2026, aligning with the timeline of other euro-backed stablecoin initiatives regulated under the regulation of the European Cryptoasset Markets, or MiCA.
