The recent bank collapses and bailouts highlight the fragility of the banking system and our bank deposits. The digital euro is an opportunity to reconfigure our monetary system to serve the interests of people and society, by making money safer and more inclusive. However, the European Central Bank’s (ECB) current proposal for a digital euro falls short of this potential. The current plan relies heavily on private financial intermediaries and envisions putting important limitations on the use of digital euros, thereby impacting its capacity to be a universally accessible public good and risking undermining the uptake of the digital euro. By heeding to the bank lobby and baking their interests into the design of the digital euro, the ECB is missing an opportunity to develop an appealing and public digital alternative to private bank deposits. The digital euro must be developed with the aim of benefiting people and society over private interests, and these considerations should guide its design. In the short term, the digital euro should: 1. Be universally accessible. People should be able to access digital euros through a diverse range of intermediaries, which include non-profit and public entities. Implementing a tiered identification system for account-based digital euros, and introducing a value-based option, would ensure the availability of digital euros to the most vulnerable segments of society. 2. Be free of cost for users. Any future legislative framework on the digital euro should include a list of basic services that should be provided for free to users, such as opening and managing an account and the provision of a payment instrument (e.g. a card). 3. Offer a high level of privacy and data protection. Cash, which is fully anonymous, should be used as the baseline when developing the digital euro. A value-based option should be introduced alongside an account-based one, and it should be designed to be fully anonymous. For the account-based option, a ‘privacy threshold’ can ensure that users’ data for small transactions is protected. 4. Have a clear European Central Bank branding. Clear branding will help to differentiate public digital euros from private bank deposits. 5. Bring resilience to the payment system. By providing an offline value-based option, and by ensuring that the digital euro’s legal and technical core infrastructure is public and works independently of any private system, we can offer an alternative to existing payment rails and increase resiliency in case of outages. The digital euro is also an opportunity to improve financial stability by transforming the banking system, and helping central banks to more effectively carry out their monetary policy. The design of the digital euro should be flexible enough to allow for the achievement of these longterm goals, and more research should be conducted to explore how different features could help achieve them. For instance, a digital euro without any holding limit could reduce moral hazard in the banking sector, and the adjustment of interest rates on digital euro deposits and direct monetary transfers could improve the transmission of monetary policy.
De digitale wereld is niet meer weg te denken in de wereld van onze kinderen. Welke kansen biedt de digitale wereld voor LO? Welke behoefte is er in het werkveld? Wat werkt wel en niet? Op het Instituut voor Sportstudies aan de Hanzehogeschool in Groningen verkennen sportstudenten en bachelor techniekstudenten samen met het werkveld de digitale mogelijkheden voor LO. Wouter de Groot vertelt over hun multidisciplinaire aanpak.
In recent years, the debate about the design of the monetary system has become increasingly prevalent. A major topic within this debate is central bank digital currency or CBDC for short. A survey by the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) shows that in 2022, nine in ten central banks (CB) explored a digital variant of their own currency (Kosse & Mattei, 2022). In the euro area, the European Central Bank (ECB) is conducting a wide-range study of the pros and cons of a CBDC, in the form of a digital euro. Other CBs are at different stages of the research cycle. The Chinese central bank is experimenting extensively with its e-CNY and has been conducting research since 2014 (Luo, 2022; Prasad, 2021). The Swedish Riksbank published its first report on the possible designs and effects of the e-krona in September 2017 (Sveriges Riksbank, 2017). Against all these various studies and experiments is the Bahamian Sand dollar, the world's first, by 2020, fully implemented CBDC. The Bahamas is not the only country; in 2022, Jamaica fully introduced the JAM-DEX (CBDC Tracker, 2023). Since CBDCs are a relatively new phenomenon, there is logically little empirical data to support the potential advantages and disadvantages. The fully implemented Sand dollar can confirm or refute some of the claimed theoretical advantages and disadvantages, and lessons can be distilled from this case for the introduction of other CBDCs. This paper first discusses the (theoretical) motivations for implementing the Sand dollar, then discusses its operation and current low adaptation rates. Finally, it derives lessons that can be used in other CBDC cases.
MULTIFILE
Mobiele netwerken vormen een drijvende kracht achter de digitalisering van onze samenleving en het verdienvermogen in alle sectoren van de economie, van industrie en energie tot logistiek en zorg. Nederlandse bedrijven zien grote kansen in 6G netwerktechnologie en toepassingen die vanaf 2030 op de markt komen. De gerichte ontwikkeling van 6G kan daarnaast sterk bijdragen aan de Nederlandse en Europese ambities op het gebied van digitale autonomie en duurzaamheid.
Teachers have a crucial role in bringing about the extensive social changes that are needed in the building of a sustainable future. In the EduSTA project, we focus on sustainability competences of teachers. We strengthen the European dimension of teacher education via Digital Open Badges as means of performing, acknowledging, documenting, and transferring the competencies as micro-credentials. EduSTA starts by mapping the contextual possibilities and restrictions for transformative learning on sustainability and by operationalising skills. The development of competence-based learning modules and open digital badge-driven pathways will proceed hand in hand and will be realised as learning modules in the partnering Higher Education Institutes and badge applications open for all teachers in Europe.Societal Issue: Teachers’ capabilities to act as active facilitators of change in the ecological transition and to educate citizens and workforce to meet the future challenges is key to a profound transformation in the green transition.Teachers’ sustainability competences have been researched widely, but a gap remains between research and the teachers’ practise. There is a need to operationalise sustainability competences: to describe direct links with everyday tasks, such as curriculum development, pedagogical design, and assessment. This need calls for an urgent operationalisation of educators’ sustainability competences – to support the goals with sustainability actions and to transfer this understanding to their students.Benefit to society: EduSTA builds a community, “Academy of Educators for Sustainable Future”, and creates open digital badge-driven learning pathways for teachers’ sustainability competences supported by multimodal learning modules. The aim is to achieve close cooperation with training schools to actively engage in-service teachers.Our consortium is a catalyst for leading and empowering profound change in the present and for the future to educate teachers ready to meet the challenges and act as active change agents for sustainable future. Emphasizing teachers’ essential role as a part of the green transition also adds to the attractiveness of teachers’ work.
ADAS- Monitor Advanced Driver Assistent Systems (ADAS) worden gezien als een middel om de verkeersveiligheidsstreefdoelstellingen uit het Strategisch Plan Verkeersveiligheid 2030 en de Europese beleidsstukken te behalen. Naast de veelal technische uitdagingen en ontwikkelingen die ADAS momenteel doormaken, wordt in de breedte van de automotive sector benadrukt dat het gebruik en de bekendheid van ADAS bij automobilisten te wensen overlaat waardoor de potentie van ADAS voor de verkeersveiligheid niet optimaal wordt benut. De ADAS alliantie , een samenwerking van meer dan 60 bedrijven, overheden en kennisinstellingen, heeft als doel gesteld het (veilig)gebruik van ADAS met 20% te bevorderen. Echter, ontbreekt actuele informatie met betrekking tot de bekendheid van, het vertrouwen in en het daadwerkelijke gebruik door automobilisten. In dit onderzoek staat de periodieke monitoring van de gebruikersadaptatie centraal waarbij de bekendheid van, de acceptatie, het percentage daadwerkelijk gebruik van ADAS door automobilisten wordt gepresenteerd doormiddel van een (digitaal) dashboard. Een divers samengesteld consortium voert het onderzoek uit en maakt daarbij gebruik van een groter netwerk om de benodigde data te vergaren en voor disseminatie. Het onderzoek bestaat uit een werkpakket waarin de gebruikersadapatie doormiddel van vragenlijstonderzoek wordt vastgesteld en een werkpakket waarin iteratief het concept ontwerp leidt tot een prototype dashboard. Het resultaat van dit onderzoek is een werkend prototype van een ADAS-dashboard. Wanneer het prototype wordt vertaalt naar een definitief ontwerp, blijft het tot vijf jaar na presentatie geüpdatet met recente data. Het ADAS-dashboard bevat een visuele en digitale weergave van het onderzoek naar het gebruikersperspectief en wordt indien gewenst uitgebreid met andere relevante data. Wanneer het ADAS dashboard is gerealiseerd, kan het zowel voor beleidsmakers en bedrijven ingezet worden om keuzes te onderbouwen of om ontwikkelingen op te baseren als ook om communicatiestrategieën te ontwikkelen waarmee het gebruik wordt bevorderd.
