The ECB’s plan to introduce a digital euro has drawn plenty of criticism from a group of economists surveyed by Börsen-Zeitung.

„The current plans are flawed and will lead to the failure of the digital euro and a weakening of the euro’s international role,“ says German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) President Marcel Fratzscher. He considers the introduction of central bank digital currency fundamentally correct, but the way it is currently designed fundamentally wrong.

Proposed restrictions such as holding limits would make the digital euro unattractive for consumers. The European Central Bank has included these limits to avoid risks to financial stability. Yet even with such limits, Fratzscher argues, the digital euro would „undermine the business model of banks.“

Volker Wieland, Managing Director of the Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability at Goethe University Frankfurt, also sees only limited value. „There is no major gap that the planned digital euro would actually fill", he says. And Jörg Krämer, Chief Economist at Commerzbank, considers its introduction entirely unnecessary, and cites the well known quote from member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors Christopher J. Waller that central bank digital currencies are a solution in search of a problem.

Silke Tober, monetary policy expert at the Macroeconomic Policy Institute (IMK), takes a more supportive view, but adds that "because it will likely be limited to 2,000 to 3,000 euros per person, and restricted to payments within the euro area, the digital euro falls far short of its potential.“ The digital euro, she adds, is no alternative to the increasingly important stablecoins.