Digital euro regulation: legislative status

Short answer

The digital euro regulation is the EU law, proposed by the European Commission on 28 June 2023 (procedure 2023/0212(COD)), that would create the digital euro and make it legal tender. The Council agreed its negotiating position on 19 December 2025 and Parliament confirmed its mandate on 9 July 2026. As of 5 November 2026, trilogue negotiations are ongoing; nothing has been agreed or adopted.

What is the digital euro regulation, and why does it matter?

The ECB cannot issue a digital euro on its own initiative alone. The Commission's view, reflected in its proposal, is that a new form of central bank money for retail use needs a legal framework adopted by the European Parliament and the Council. That framework, the EU digital euro regulation, would set out what the digital euro legally is, who must accept it, who may distribute it, what it may cost, how personal data are handled and how much of it any one person may hold. The ECB would then decide whether and when to issue it, within those rules.

This page tracks the digital euro legislation as it moves between the institutions. It does not explain the digital euro from first principles; for that, start with our digital euro overview. Nor does it cover the ECB's operational calendar for the pilot and possible issuance, which lives on our digital euro timeline. Here the focus is narrower: what the co-legislators are negotiating, where each institution stands and which questions the final law would settle.

Nothing on this page is legal advice. It is an independent summary of public documents. DIGITAL EUR is not affiliated with the ECB, the Commission, the Council or the Parliament.

Which legal acts are in the package?

The Commission presented a "single currency package" on 28 June 2023. Three files in it matter for the digital euro, and the European Parliament's press release of 9 July 2026 lists all three:

When people search for "the digital euro regulation", they usually mean the first file. The cash regulation is politically linked to it: both the Council and the Parliament have treated access to cash and the digital euro as two halves of the same bargain.

Digital euro regulation status: where is the legislation now?

The file is in the final stage of the ordinary legislative procedure. Both co-legislators have adopted negotiating positions and are negotiating with each other, with the Commission taking part. The table below shows only steps confirmed by primary or institutional sources; the individual trilogue rounds are listed in the next section.

Two points of interpretation help here.

First, a "position" or "mandate" is not law. The Council's December 2025 text and the Parliament's July 2026 mandate are each institution's opening position for negotiations. Neither binds anyone outside those institutions, and both will change in the final compromise.

Second, the political target date is not a legal deadline. The ECB's digital euro FAQ says the Eurosystem expects the regulation to be adopted by the end of 2026, and ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone said in a speech on 5 November 2026 that the European Council has called for negotiations to conclude by the end of this year. Targets of this kind can slip.

How did the European Parliament vote on the digital euro?

"Digital euro parliament vote" usually refers to the plenary vote of 9 July 2026, but there were two stages, and the three files in the package were handled differently. Both stages concerned the mandate to negotiate under Rule 72 of Parliament's Rules of Procedure. The Legislative Observatory still lists all three files as "Awaiting Parliament's position in 1st reading": Parliament has not yet voted on a final text.

Sources: ECON press release, 23 June 2026; EP press release, 9 July 2026; Legislative Observatory files 2023/0212(COD), 2023/0211(COD) and 2023/0208(COD).

Why was there a plenary vote at all? Normally a committee's decision to open negotiations is simply announced in plenary. According to the Parliament's press release, the Patriots for Europe, European Conservatives and Reformists and Europe of Sovereign Nations groups challenged the ECON decisions on the digital euro and non-euro PSP files, which forced the votes of 9 July. The cash file was not challenged. The 416 votes in favour therefore measure support for starting negotiations on the committee's text, not approval of the digital euro as law.

What has happened in the digital euro trilogues so far?

A trilogue is an informal three-way meeting between negotiators from the Parliament, the Council and the Commission. The institutions do not publish a public calendar of these meetings, so the table combines official Council and Parliament documents with specialist press reporting, and labels each row accordingly.

What this tells a reader: the negotiators have worked through fees, distribution, cash acceptance, offline payments and anti-money-laundering, and have narrowed some differences on legal tender. The most politically sensitive design question, the holding limit, had not reached political level by late October. No provisional agreement had been announced by the Council or the Parliament as of 5 November 2026. We record the outcome of later rounds on our digital euro news page.

How does a proposal become EU digital euro law?

The ordinary legislative procedure from this point usually runs as follows.

1. Trilogues. Negotiators from the Parliament (led by the rapporteur), the Council presidency (Ireland holds it in the second half of 2026) and the Commission meet in political and technical sessions to find a compromise text.
2. Provisional agreement. If they agree, the result is a provisional political agreement. It is announced by press release but is not yet law.
3. Endorsement. The Council's committee of member state ambassadors and the Parliament's ECON committee each endorse the compromise.
4. Legal-linguistic revision. Lawyer-linguists finalise the text in all official EU languages. This can take several months.
5. Formal adoption. The Parliament votes in plenary, and the Council adopts the same text.
6. Publication and entry into force. The regulation is published in the Official Journal and enters into force on the date it specifies. Some provisions may apply later than others.
7. ECB decision. Only after adoption would the ECB Governing Council decide whether to issue the digital euro. The ECB FAQ says it will not take that decision before the regulation is adopted.

The Parliament's mandate also adds a practical step after any authorisation: a roll-out period of at least 24 months, according to the ECON press release. Whether that survives the negotiations is not yet known.

What would the regulation actually decide?

The regulation is where the political choices sit. The table compares the three texts on the points most readers ask about. "Proposal" means the Commission's 2023 text; "Council" and "Parliament" mean their negotiating positions. None of these columns is final law.

Sources for the table: the Commission proposal as summarised in the Legislative Observatory and the ECB FAQ; the Council press release; the ECON press release. Short cells reflect how the source summarises a point, not the full legal text.

Legal tender: would everyone have to accept the digital euro?

Legal tender is the core legal feature, and the reason the EU digital euro law needs to be a regulation adopted by both co-legislators. The Commission's proposal would give the digital euro legal tender status, which means payees must, as a general rule, accept it for payment at face value. The proposal includes exceptions. Under Article 9 of the proposal, an enterprise with fewer than 10 employees or an annual turnover or balance sheet total of no more than €2 million, and a non-profit legal entity, may refuse it unless it already accepts comparable digital means of payment, and a natural person acting in a purely personal capacity is not obliged to accept it.

The Parliament's mandate keeps this structure but extends the exemption to the self-employed and to small as well as micro enterprises that do not accept other digital payments. It also allows temporary refusal in defined situations, such as a power outage. For a merchant, the practical question is simple to state and not yet answerable: "If I already take cards or instant payments, will I have to take the digital euro too?" Under both the proposal and the Parliament text, accepting comparable digital payments is what removes the exemption for the smallest firms. The final wording will decide where the line falls. Press reporting on the trilogue of 8 October 2026 says positions on parts of the legal tender status have moved closer, while exceptions to merchant acceptance still need political negotiation; no agreed text has been published.

Holding limits

A holding limit caps how many digital euros one person can keep. The aim, as the ECB explains in its FAQ, is to stop large outflows of bank deposits into the digital euro, particularly in a crisis. Payments above the limit would still be possible because the design links a digital euro account to a bank account: the "reverse waterfall" tops up from the linked account when a payment needs it, and the "waterfall" moves any excess back.

The limit itself is not in any text. What the institutions disagree on is who sets it:

• under the Commission proposal, the ECB develops the instruments and sets the parameters;
• under the Council position, the ECB sets the limit, but within a ceiling agreed by the Council;
• under the Parliament mandate, the Commission sets an EU-wide ceiling on the basis of an ECB recommendation, with Parliament seeking full decision-making involvement.

The Legislative Train notes that holding limits had still not been discussed at political level in the trilogues as of its 25 October 2026 update.

You will often see €3,000 quoted as "the" limit. That is not accurate. The ECB FAQ explains that, following a request that arose during the legislative negotiations, the ECB analysed hypothetical holding limits of up to €3,000 per person and concluded that limits in that range would not harm financial stability. That is an analysis of a scenario, not a decided figure.

For businesses, the Parliament text is specific: companies could not hold digital euros except to accumulate incoming payments for up to 24 hours. The ECB's own design work has long assumed a zero holding limit for businesses, with incoming payments swept automatically to a linked account. How that is written into law remains to be agreed.

Fees and merchant compensation

This is the topic most relevant to merchants and payment providers. The proposal, the Council and the Parliament all agree on two principles: individuals should get basic digital euro services free of charge, and the fees that merchants pay to their provider, and that providers charge each other, should be capped.

They differ on how the caps are calculated and for how long. The Council would cap interchange and merchant service charges for a transitional period of at least five years at a level based on fees for comparable payment methods, and then base the caps on the actual costs of the digital euro. The Parliament also wants caps and makes offline payments fee-free. Parliament's Legislative Train summarises the remaining gap as a choice between a "national exemptions" approach and a "no worse off" principle for merchants. The exact cap levels are not set in any of the texts we reviewed.

The ECB FAQ adds a point that is already settled on the Eurosystem side: the Eurosystem says it will not charge scheme or processing fees and will bear the costs of setting up the scheme and infrastructure. That does not remove the fees that intermediaries can charge merchants within the caps. How capped fees would compare with today's card and transfer costs for a shop is discussed in our guide for businesses.

Privacy and data protection

All three texts commit to strong privacy, and the differences are in the detail. The ECB FAQ says that for offline payments, personal transaction details would be known only to the payer and payee; for online payments, the Eurosystem could not identify users directly, while the user's PSP would know their identity for anti-money-laundering purposes. The Parliament mandate adds privacy by design and by default, refers to zero-knowledge proofs and says the ECB would not have access to personal identification data.

What remains for the final law is the precise list of data that PSPs, the ECB and national central banks may process, and for what purposes. The substance of that debate is covered on our digital euro privacy page.

Offline use

Offline payments, made device to device without a network connection, appear in every version. The Parliament describes offline digital euros as equivalent to cash, including the consequence that losing the device means losing the offline money without a refund. Liability rules for offline double-spending risk are listed by the Parliament as something the ECB must settle before launch.

Distribution and the non-euro area

Banks and other supervised payment service providers would distribute the digital euro; the ECB would have no contractual relationship with users. The Parliament's mandate also lists e-money institutions, post offices and regulated crypto-asset service providers, and supports distribution by PSPs from non-euro EU countries, the subject of file 2023/0211(COD).

Not programmable money

The Legislative Observatory summary of the proposal records that the digital euro would not be programmable money. This is often confused with conditional payments, which are payments executed automatically when agreed conditions are met. The ECB has tested conditional payments through its innovation work, which we explain on our innovation platform page.

What is still undecided?

As of 5 November 2026, the following points are open in the sense that the final legal text has not been agreed:

• Who sets the holding limit, and its level. No figure appears in any legislative text; the €3,000 figure is an ECB scenario analysis.
• The fee-cap method. The benchmark for comparable payment methods, the length of any transitional regime and the treatment of offline fees.
• Acceptance exemptions. Whether small enterprises, not just micro-enterprises, are exempt, and on what conditions.
• Data processing. The precise categories of personal data each actor may process.
• Business holdings. Whether a short holding window (the Parliament's 24 hours) or a flat zero limit is written into the regulation or left to the ECB.
• Timing. Whether the end-2026 political target is met. The ECB's ambition of a potential first issuance in 2029 depends on adoption, as the ECB FAQ states.

Some secondary commentary has reported further divergences, for example on how holding limits for legal persons are framed or how long a transitional fee regime would last. We have not been able to verify these against official texts, so we do not present them here as facts.

What does this mean for a business today?

Until a final text is adopted, no business has a legal obligation under the digital euro regulation. That said, the direction of travel is clear enough to inform planning.

1. Assume acceptance obligations will be broad, with size-based exceptions. If you already accept card or instant payments, plan on the basis that you may eventually be asked to accept the digital euro as well. Check the final exemption wording once it is published.
2. Expect capped, not zero, merchant fees. The Eurosystem says it will not charge scheme fees, but your provider can charge within regulated caps.
3. Expect incoming funds to be swept. With a zero or very short holding window for businesses, digital euro receipts would move to your linked account. That creates another reference stream to match against invoices. Our current reconciliation software works with today's euro bank and payment data; it does not process digital euros.
4. Do not treat positions as law. Contract terms, pricing pages and investor material should not quote a holding limit or a fee level as if they were decided.
5. Track the pilot separately. The ECB's 2027 pilot depends on ECB selection, not on the regulation; see our pilot guide.

For a broader view of operational impact, see our digital euro guide for businesses.

Which claims about the digital euro law are often misread?

"The Parliament approved the digital euro." In July 2026 the Parliament approved a negotiating mandate, not the regulation. Some headlines blurred this.

"The holding limit is €3,000." It is a figure the ECB analysed at the co-legislators' request, not a legal provision.

"Cash will be phased out." Every text in the package explicitly protects cash, and the Council and Parliament both want to strengthen its acceptance.

How can you follow the legislation reliably?

• The Parliament's Legislative Train entry gives a narrative summary (last updated 25 October 2026).
• The Legislative Observatory procedure file lists formal events; its status field can lag behind them.
• The Council's digital euro page and press releases will announce any provisional agreement. The Council's public document register also carries the meeting notices for the working party that prepares each trilogue, which is how the round dates above can be checked.
• EUR-Lex holds the proposal and, eventually, the adopted text.

We record dated developments, such as a provisional agreement, on our digital euro news page and update this page when the legal position changes.

Frequently asked questions

Has the digital euro regulation been adopted?

No. As of 5 November 2026, the Council (19 December 2025) and the Parliament (9 July 2026) have adopted negotiating positions and trilogues are ongoing. No provisional agreement has been announced, and nothing has been published in the Official Journal.

What is procedure 2023/0212(COD)?

It is the European Parliament's reference for the proposed regulation on the establishment of the digital euro, Commission document COM(2023) 369 of 28 June 2023. "COD" denotes the ordinary legislative procedure, in which Parliament and Council decide jointly.

Who decides the holding limit?

This is one of the main open points. The Commission proposed that the ECB set the parameters; the Council wants the ECB to set limits within a Council-agreed ceiling; the Parliament wants the Commission to set the ceiling on an ECB recommendation. The final law will decide.

Will merchants have to accept the digital euro?

Under the current texts most would, with exceptions for the smallest firms (and, in the proposal, non-profits) that do not accept comparable digital payments; the final exemptions are not yet agreed. What acceptance would mean in practice for shops and online sellers is covered in our guide for businesses.

Will using the digital euro cost money?

Basic services for individuals would be free under all three texts. Merchants would pay fees to their provider, but capped. The method and level of the caps are still under negotiation.

When could the digital euro be issued if the law passes?

The ECB says it aims to be ready for a potential first issuance during 2029 if the regulation is adopted in 2026. The Parliament's mandate adds a roll-out period of at least 24 months after authorisation. Neither is a confirmed launch date; our digital euro timeline tracks the conditional dates in detail.

Does the regulation affect cash?

Yes, through the companion regulation on the legal tender of euro banknotes and coins. Both the Council and the Parliament want to limit businesses' ability to refuse cash and to require Member States to monitor access to cash.

How many digital euro trilogues have there been?

Parliament's Legislative Train said on 25 October 2026 that the negotiating teams had met five times since the first political trilogue on 13 July 2026. A further round was reported as scheduled for 5 November 2026. No provisional agreement had been announced by then.

Sources

• European Parliament, "Digital euro: MEPs ready to start negotiations", press release, 9 July 2026 (accessed 5 November 2026)
• European Parliament, ECON committee vote on the digital euro, press release, 23 June 2026 (accessed 5 November 2026)
• European Parliament, Legislative Observatory, procedure file 2023/0212(COD) (accessed 5 November 2026)
• European Parliament, Legislative Observatory, procedure file 2023/0211(COD), non-euro area payment service providers (accessed 5 November 2026)
• European Parliament, Legislative Observatory, procedure file 2023/0208(COD), legal tender of euro banknotes and coins (accessed 5 November 2026)
• European Parliament, Legislative Observatory, summary of the Commission proposal (accessed 5 November 2026)
• European Parliament, Legislative Train: Digital euro (accessed 5 November 2026)
• Council of the EU, "Single currency: Council agrees position on the digital euro and on strengthening the role of cash", 19 December 2025 (accessed 5 November 2026)
• Council of the EU, Presidency discussion note in advance of the second political Single Currency Package trilogue, WK 13232/2026, 31 August 2026 (accessed 5 November 2026)
• Council of the EU, notice of meeting to prepare the third trilogue on the Single Currency Package, CM 4227/26, 18 September 2026 (accessed 5 November 2026)
• Council of the EU, Digital euro policy page (accessed 5 November 2026)
• European Commission, Proposal for a Regulation on the establishment of the digital euro, COM(2023) 369, EUR-Lex (accessed 5 November 2026)
• ECB, Digital euro FAQ (accessed 5 November 2026)
• ECB, Piero Cipollone, "Shaping the future of money", keynote speech, 5 November 2026 (accessed 5 November 2026)
• Secondary (press report, used only for trilogue dates and reported progress): Agence Europe, "Digital euro: EU co-legislators examine anti-money laundering, offline payments, usage fees", 20 October 2026 (accessed 5 November 2026)