On Thursday, 9 July 2026, the European Parliament voted in Strasbourg. 416 MEPs voted to open negotiations with the Council on introducing the digital euro. 169 voted against, 22 abstained.
Three political groups had tried to stop it. The ECR, the Patriots and the ESN had challenged the decision taken by the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee on 23 June. They failed.
That clears the way for the last phase of legislation. Parliament and Council are now negotiating the final text. A first round with the Irish Council presidency is to take place shortly.
And one of the core points of Parliament's position sits in a single sentence of the press release: there is to be a limit on how many digital euros an individual may hold.
Why this sentence weighs more than all the others is set out in detail in our analysis of who will set the rules of the digital euro tomorrow. Since Thursday it has been the negotiating position of both legislators.
What Parliament has decided
According to the press release, Parliament's negotiating position contains these core points:
- The digital euro would be a new electronic form of money, issued by the European Central Bank, usable online and offline.
- Data protection safeguards are to be built in. Personal data is to be processed only insofar as strictly necessary for the system to function.
- Most businesses would be obliged to accept the digital euro. There would be exemptions for the self-employed and small businesses that do not accept digital payments in any case.
- Basic services such as opening an account and a payment instrument would be free of charge.
- There would be a limit per person.
- Euro countries would have to keep cash accessible, and businesses could not ban cash.
The package consists of three laws. One introduces the digital euro. One allows banks from EU countries outside the euro to distribute it. The third governs the status of euro banknotes and coins as legal tender. The third was not challenged. It too is now being negotiated.
How the vote came about
The road to 9 July was short. On 23 June the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee adopted its position on the package, the digital euro law itself by 43 votes to 14 with one abstention. On the same day the committee decided to open negotiations with the Council. On 26 June the report was tabled for plenary as document A10-0185/2026, and on 6 July the decision to negotiate was announced in plenary.
Normally such a decision goes through without a vote. Because three groups challenged it, the plenary had to vote. The result is clear: 416 votes are a broad majority, more than twice as many as the votes against. Anyone who had counted on Parliament stopping it has had no reason to since Thursday.
The limit is a dial
Cash knows no limit. You can hold a banknote ten times or a thousand times. Nobody has to configure a value for it.
With the digital euro it is different. Even the Commission's proposal of 2023 provides that its use as a store of value can be restricted. Under Article 16 the ECB develops instruments for this and decides on their parameters. Payment service providers must apply the limits.
Now comes the decisive point. Who sets the number?
Parliament's economic committee put it like this in its position of 23 June: the limit is to be set by the Commission, on the recommendation of the ECB, and reviewed at least every two years. Parliament wants full co-decision on it.
The Council sees it differently. In its negotiating mandate of December 2025, the Council itself is to set an overall ceiling within which the ECB determines the holding limits. For legal persons the mandate expressly also provides for a limit of zero.
For business owners this is no detail. A holding limit of zero for companies means: the company accepts digital euros but may not keep them. Under the economic committee's position, businesses could not hold digital euros except to collect incoming payments for up to 24 hours.
Who ends up turning the dial, Commission, Council or ECB, is now being negotiated. That there is a dial has been decided. Both legislators want a limit. The only dispute is over who sets it.
And a dial reviewed every two years is, by definition, movable. Today it protects financial stability. What it is set for tomorrow is decided by whoever is in charge tomorrow.
Why a limit has to identify you
A holding limit per person only works if the system knows which accounts belong to which person. Otherwise you would simply open three accounts with three banks.
The Commission's proposal solves this openly. Users can hold several accounts with different providers. But an individual limit applies to them, which they divide among the different providers. Under Article 16 the user must tell the providers how their allowance is split. For joint accounts, the sum of the individual allowances applies.
That means: a limit per person needs a clearly identifiable person. Money and identity grow closer together than ever before.
Anything above the limit is, under the proposal, automatically moved to an ordinary bank account. The Commission calls this a waterfall. Without a linked bank account, then, it does not work. And under Article 16 the digital euro is to bear no interest.
Offline like cash, online like an account
Parliament stresses data protection. Under the committee's position, principles such as data protection by design and by default are to be built in. Technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs are to verify payments without disclosing personal data. The ECB itself is to have no access to identification data.
At the same time, the same position describes two worlds. Online payments run through an account-based system. Offline payments run directly via a local storage device and are to work like cash. The committee names the consequence itself: whoever loses the device loses the offline money, with no refund.
That means: cash-like privacy exists only offline, on a device, for small amounts. Everything else runs through accounts with banks and payment service providers that have to identify you for the limit to take hold. That the ECB does not see your name does not mean that nobody sees it.
Programmable or not?
On programmability the draft contains a sentence of its own. Article 24(2) of the Commission's proposal reads: "The digital euro shall not be programmable money." The Council mandate contains an identical sentence.
Yet the same Article 24 governs something else in the paragraph before. The ECB may adopt standards for conditional payment transactions. And it may provide the functionalities needed for this in the settlement infrastructure, including the reservation of funds. The recitals give as examples automatic payments triggered by software according to predefined conditions.
Under the draft, the difference between a conditional payment and programmable money is a question of definition. Programmable would be units whose use is restricted to certain goods or limited in time. Conditional payments are not to aim at this or bring it about.
That is the legal position of a draft that will be negotiated from now on. The text has not been adopted, and nobody knows today what will come out of the trilogue. A prohibition in law limits what the system may do. The infrastructure determines what it can do. Laws can be changed. Infrastructure, once built, stays.
The argument is sovereignty
The project is justified not with control but with independence. In Parliament's words, the digital euro is to give citizens a secure way to reduce dependence on providers from outside the EU.
Parliament's rapporteur, Fernando Navarrete Rojas of the EPP, summed up the aim in June like this: "The digital euro will complement cash, never replace it."
That is the political promise. Legally, what counts is what stands in the text of the regulation, and that is only now being negotiated. A promise in a press release binds no future legislator. An infrastructure with a holding limit, identity checks and an acceptance obligation, on the other hand, binds everyone who uses it.
What happens to cash
Parliament has come out clearly in favour of cash. Euro countries are to be obliged to keep cash accessible. Businesses are not to be allowed to exclude cash by a sign or in their terms and conditions. Member states are to monitor the availability of cash regularly, with a view to older people, people on low incomes and people without a bank account.
For everyone who uses cash, that matters. But this too is a negotiating position, not law. And it changes nothing about the direction: alongside cash comes a second form of state money that has a limit, needs an identity and runs through a central infrastructure.
The timetable
The ECB decided in October 2025 to move to the next phase of the project. Its assumption at the time: if the regulation is adopted in the course of 2026, a pilot and first transactions could take place from mid-2027. For a possible first issuance the Eurosystem wants to be ready in the course of 2029.
The ECB supplied the costs along with it. Up to first issuance it expects development costs of around €1.3 billion, and after that operating costs of about €320 million a year. They are to be borne by the Eurosystem, covered by its income from issuing money. The costs are budgeted before the law exists.
The decision on whether and when the digital euro is issued is taken by the ECB's Governing Council only after the law has been adopted. Parliament wants an introductory phase of at least 24 months after the go-ahead.
With the vote of 9 July, the ECB's timetable is within reach. Both legislators now have their positions. Both want a limit. Both want an acceptance obligation for most merchants.
What it means for the UK, Ireland, the Nordics and Benelux
In Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Finland, all members of the euro area, the digital euro would be legal tender from issuance, with an acceptance obligation and a limit. In Denmark and Sweden, which are in the EU but outside the euro, the second of the three laws governs how their banks may distribute it.
The United Kingdom and Norway are not part of the euro area. Under the economic committee's position, however, visitors and in certain cases people living outside the euro area are also to be able to use the digital euro. Anyone who lives in London or Oslo and has accounts, rental income or business relationships in the euro area will therefore also move within this system in future. None of these rules applies to the pound itself. On a digital pound the Bank of England states that it has not decided whether to introduce one, that a decision on next steps is expected in 2026, and that a holding limit is likely but not yet set. That decision is taken in London, not in Brussels or Frankfurt.
What you make of it
The digital euro is no reason to panic. It is a reason to review your own structure. The question is not whether you will use it. The question is how much of your wealth depends on a single currency area and its parameters.
Three things lie beyond the reach of any holding limit:
- Accounts outside the EU, in other currencies and jurisdictions. Which locations come into question is shown in our overview of non-EU bank accounts. This is about asset protection, not about everyday payments.
- Physical precious metals, stored outside the EU. How that works in Switzerland, Liechtenstein or Singapore is set out on our page on storing gold abroad.
- Jurisdictions outside the EU for the structures that hold your wealth. We have summarised the reasons under why outside the EU.
Anyone who wants to see the larger line into which new central bank money fits will find it in our analysis of the Great Reset.
The digital euro will not arrive overnight. But the decisions now being negotiated in Brussels will then apply for decades. Anyone who wants to be prepared prepares while the parameters are still being negotiated, not once they are set.