Next month, the EC is expected to begin public consultations on digital euro. Also, the European Commission is expected to outline new laws on building the legal foundation for a digital version of the EU fiat currency. The first results are believed to come out in 2023.
The Commission plans to introduce the draft next year, but before it wants to have a public consultation about the project. The EC is primarily interested in practical issues such as how the coin can help with everyday transactions.
Before the future legislation gets adopted, the EC will first synchronise the bill with the governments and legal framework of all of its member states. The ECB is now conducting tests with the digital euro, and by the end of 2023, the authority hopes to have a prototype for the CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency).
ECB's Governing Council is the one that will make the final decision, but front EU nations like France and Germany have already started pushing ECB to intensify its efforts in this direction. Brussels and other leading European capitals are worried that the eurozone is lagging behind China, the United States, and Russia, which countries have been working on their own CBDCs for quite some time.
However, the final stage of the process is still away in the future. Many assessments are due to be carried out, which should analyse possible destabilisation effects, benefits and other potentially unexpected impacts of the proposed digital currencies. Accordingly, the digital euro is not expected to appear before 2025.