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.
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.
Given the increasing importance of sustainability as a part of one’s daily routine and life in countries in the European Union, there is a need to establish a basic understanding of the attitudes, behaviours and culture among older people. This, in turn, should lead to better policies which help alleviate the effects of the current cost-of-living and energy crises and make our societies more sustainable and resilient. Despite the growing awareness of sustainability amongst the general public, a conceptual model of a sustainable lifestyle among older people is missing. The existing reports from the WHOprovide some guidance on how to move along, as they touch upon items that are related to sustainability such as walkability, proximity to transportation stops and emergency preparedness, and highlight the need to improve the fit between people’s needs and the environments in which they live. Any effort to come up with such a conceptual model would have to acknowledge that energy conservation and sustainable behaviours among our older population, as was shown by Bennetts et al., are not an integral part of all older people’s lifestyles and day-to-day choices. Also, following Dikken et al.,many seemingly sustainable choices may be made purely out of financial necessity. New models and policies would have to acknowledge that in times of declining purchase power, the majority of older people living on the edge make sacrifices in terms of energy use in the broadest sense of the word due to financial constraints and not out of concern for the environment.
MULTIFILE
