Who Controls the Transaction?

Europe’s digital euro and the politics of payment infrastructure

Money is no longer the system

A payment is often seen as the simplest act in an economy: a transfer of value from one party to another. But in a digital society, that transfer no longer happens in isolation. It is processed, validated, routed and recorded by an underlying system — a system that is increasingly global, privately governed and technologically complex.

In that context, money itself is no longer the defining element of economic sovereignty.

Infrastructure is.

In a recent speech, ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone framed the digital euro not as a technological upgrade, but as a strategic necessity. Europe, he argued, must reduce its dependence on non-European payment systems to ensure resilience and autonomy in an increasingly fragmented world.

The argument is clear. The reaction is not.

While institutions describe the digital euro as a safeguard of sovereignty, parts of the public perceive it as a mechanism of control. Between those positions lies a deeper structural shift — one that goes beyond currency and into the architecture of economic participation itself.

The invisible dependency: Europe’s payment paradox

Europe issues one of the world’s most important currencies. Yet the infrastructure that processes everyday euro transactions is, to a significant extent, not European.

Two-thirds of card payments in the euro area rely on international schemes. Online transactions are increasingly routed through global technology platforms. Fees, standards and data practices are often set outside European jurisdiction.

This creates a structural paradox: Europe is monetarily sovereign, but infrastructurally dependent.

The risks are not theoretical. Dependence on external infrastructure introduces three systemic vulnerabilities:

• Disconnection risk — access to payment systems can, in principle, be restricted or withdrawn
• Extraterritorial reach — foreign legal frameworks can shape domestic transactions
• Market power concentration — pricing and rules are dictated by dominant global actors

The comparison with energy dependency is not incidental. Europe has already experienced how reliance on external infrastructure can evolve from efficiency into vulnerability.

Payments are now following the same trajectory.

From money to rails: the real system shift

The debate around the digital euro is often framed as a transition from cash to digital money. But this framing understates the scale of the transformation.

The real shift is not:

• physical → digital

It is:

• money → infrastructure

In a digital environment, value does not move freely. It moves through rails — systems that determine:

• who can transact
• under what conditions
• at what cost
• and with which data exposure

This introduces a new layer of power.

Where cash transactions are direct and autonomous, digital transactions are:

• mediated
• conditional
• and potentially programmable

This does not imply that the digital euro will be used for control. The ECB explicitly emphasises privacy, offline functionality and limits to oversight.

But structurally, the nature of money changes when it becomes embedded in infrastructure.

The question is no longer what money is. The question is who controls the system through which it flows.

The trust gap: sovereignty vs. control

If the institutional narrative is about autonomy, the public reaction reveals a different dimension: trust.

Responses to the digital euro frequently invoke themes such as:

• loss of financial freedom
• surveillance and traceability
• potential exclusion from the system

These concerns are often dismissed as exaggerated. But they point to a real issue: Infrastructure centralisation requires institutional trust — and that trust is uneven.

The ECB’s position is that a European, publicly anchored system is inherently more trustworthy than reliance on foreign private actors.

A growing part of the public, however, questions whether any centralised digital system — regardless of jurisdiction — can guarantee neutrality over time.

This creates a governance tension:

• Strategic logic → centralise infrastructure to reduce external dependency
• Societal perception → centralisation increases internal control risk

Both positions are internally consistent. And both can be true at the same time.

The geopolitical layer: payments as strategic infrastructure

The digital euro cannot be understood in isolation. It is part of a broader shift in how infrastructure is viewed across domains:

• Energy → from efficiency to security
• Semiconductors → from supply chains to sovereignty
• Telecom networks → from connectivity to control
• Finance → from markets to infrastructure

Payments now sit firmly within this logic.

Control over payment systems implies control over:

• economic participation
• transaction data
• financial flows
• and, in extreme cases, access to the economy itself

In that sense, payment infrastructure is not merely a financial utility.

It is a sovereign capability.

The digital euro is Europe’s attempt to ensure that this capability remains within its own institutional framework — rather than being outsourced to global private or foreign actors.

The deeper question: access to the system

Beneath the debate over CBDCs, privacy and fees lies a more fundamental issue: Who has the authority to grant or deny access to economic life?

In a cash-based system, access is largely unconditional. In a fully digital system, access is mediated by infrastructure — and therefore by governance.

This does not automatically lead to exclusion or control. But it does mean that:

• access becomes design-dependent
• participation becomes system-dependent
• and autonomy becomes infrastructure-dependent

This is the core transformation.

And it extends far beyond the digital euro.

Conclusion — The infrastructure defines the system

The debate around the digital euro is often framed in binary terms: innovation versus risk, sovereignty versus control, public versus private. But the underlying reality is more complex.

Europe is attempting to solve a real structural problem: its dependence on external payment infrastructure in a digital economy. The proposed solution — a sovereign digital payment system — is consistent with that objective.

At the same time, the shift toward infrastructure-based money introduces new questions about governance, trust and control that cannot be resolved through technical design alone.

In a digital economy, money is no longer the system. The infrastructure that processes it is.

And as that infrastructure becomes more central, more integrated and more powerful, the defining question for Europe will not be whether it controls its currency.

It will be whether it can build a system that is not only sovereign — but also trusted by those who depend on it.

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Photo by Mathieu Stern / Unsplash