How has the motivation and justification for issuing a digital euro evolved?

It hasn’t changed. We have been consistent in explaining why we think a digital euro is important: Europeans have always had the possibility to pay either with commercial bank money or with cash, which is central bank money. Everything is moving to the digital world, so our logic is to also bring cash into the digital age.

There is a more economic-minded logic, too. We sometimes refer to the ‘monetary anchor’. This means