By Antonio Tejeda Encinas | CEO META Channel Corporation | Geo-Technopolitical Analyst
The digital euro: the European contradiction that no one is watching
At META Channel—a strategic corporation specialized in technological law, digital regulation and development of corporate infrastructures—we analyze the impact of the digital euro from the perspective of European governance and the institutional stability of the digital ecosystem.
Europe has been immersed in the debate about the digital euro for years. The official narrative presents it as a natural and inevitable evolution: a response to the digitalization of payments, a tool for monetary sovereignty against stablecoins private companies and a defensive movement in the geoeconomic competition with China.
This approach, focused on technical efficiency and financial competence, is correct in what it describes, but it is dangerously incomplete.
Because the digital euro is not, and will never be, a simple payment system. It is a power infrastructure.
And this is where the European debate shows a contradiction so profound that it is alarming. We are building the most centralized power infrastructure in our recent history, and we seem to have forgotten everything we have learned about limiting power in the digital age.
I. Money Is Not Just a Payment: It is a Map of Life
The fundamental mistake is treating the digital euro as a 2.0 version of a bank transfer or a credit card. It is not. A Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) is fundamentally a traceability architecture.
Money, in its raw form, says more about us than any social network. It reveals our priorities (what we spend on), our affinities (who we donate to), our weaknesses (what medications we buy), and our networks (who we associate with).
The ECB and regulators assure us that privacy will be “equivalent to cash” at certain levels. But this is a technical promise that ignores political reality. Technology does not forget. An architecture designed for traceability, no matter how anonymized in its surface layers, can always be re-identified under the right conditions.
I’m not talking about malicious surveillance today. I’m talking about a design that creates possibility perpetual of that vigilance tomorrow.
And here pedagogy is essential. Let’s think about what this means in practice:
- Commercially: What happens if an insurer, in the future, can infer patterns of risky behavior (micropayments in tobacco machines, purchases of certain foods) and adjust its premiums?
- Socially: What happens if a credit risk algorithm penalizes those who donate to causes considered “unstable” or those who have “irregular” spending patterns?
- Politically: What if a government can track precisely who funds a union, an independent media outlet, or an “uncomfortable” environmental organization?
The risk is not that an ECB agent is going to spy on our supermarket shopping. The risk is the creation of a centralized, immutable database of human behavior that can be used to profile, influence and control on a scale that no institution, public or private, has ever had.
II. The Great Contradiction: We Regulate Google, but Not Ourselves
This is where the argument reaches its critical point. Europe has rightly positioned itself as the world leader in regulating digital power.
We have spent the last decade precisely diagnosing how large technology platforms (the Big Tech) used their infrastructure power to distort markets, erode privacy, and weaken democratic pluralism.
And in response, we have built the most sophisticated regulatory arsenal on the planet:
- Digital Services Act (DSA), to control power over content and give rights to users.
- Digital Markets Act (DMA), to dismantle the monopoly power of the gatekeepers (access gatekeepers).
- Media Freedom Act (EMFA), to protect pluralism from economic and political interference.
Europe has perfectly understood that whoever controls the digital infrastructure (the search engine, the application store, the social network) has disproportionate power.
And yet, in a staggering paradox, as we are about to deploy the most critical digital infrastructure of all – our own currency – we appear to be completely ignoring the principles of the DSA, DMA and EMFA.
We are designing the digital euro as a purely monetary project, isolated in the ECB, when by its very nature it is the gatekeeper definitive.
III. The Proposal: A Digital Euro Under the Rule of Law (Digital)
If Europe takes its own democratic principles seriously, the digital euro cannot be a state of regulatory exception. It should be the first major public infrastructure designed, from day one, under the safeguards we have already created.
My proposal is that the design of the digital euro must be explicitly subject to the principles of these three laws.
1. The Digital Euro as a “Market” (DMA Principles)
The DMA was created to prevent a gatekeeper (like Apple or Google) impose their conditions, their commissions and their payment systems on their platform.
The digital euro is, by definition, a gatekeeper monetary. The risk is that the ECB or designated intermediaries create a closed ecosystem.
- Applying the DMA means: Guarantee interoperability by law. Ensure that any developer of wallets (digital wallets), banks or fintechs can connect with the digital euro under fair, transparent and non-discriminatory conditions. It means that the ECB cannot use its position to create a monopoly on access to public currency.
2. The Digital Euro as a “Service” (DSA Principles)
The DSA was created to give fundamental rights to users against the power of platforms. It mandates algorithmic transparency and, crucially, gives the right to appeal when an account is suspended or content is removed.
What is more serious than having a post? Let them freeze your money.
- Applying the DSA means: If a payment is blocked, if a transfer is flagged by a “risk” algorithm, or if an account is frozen (perhaps by mistake, or by an opaque administrative order), the citizen should have the same rights of transparency and appeal that they have on a social network. Your rights to your money cannot be less than your rights to yours. selfies.
3. The Digital Euro as “Influence” (EMFA Principles)
The EMFA seeks to protect pluralism by avoiding economic or state interference in the media. Its spirit is to protect democratic debate from the pressure of money.
The digital euro, if it allows full traceability, is the perfect tool for economic pressure. Allows you to see who finances what.
- Applying the EMFA means: The design of the digital euro must prioritize the protection of privacy in sensitive transactions, such as donations to the media, NGOs or political causes. It must be technically impossible for the State (or any actor) to use the payment system to create “maps of influence” or exert a “chilling effect” on support for civil society.
IV. The Inevitable Counterargument: Security vs. Freedom (And Why It’s a False Dichotomy)
The ECB and financial regulators have a legitimate counterargument, and it would be dishonest not to address it directly.
They will say: “Traceability is not a bureaucratic whim. It is a legal obligation derived from anti-money laundering (AML) and anti-terrorism financing (CFT) regulations. Without traceability, the digital euro would become the perfect haven for organized crime.”
It is a valid argument. And the answer is not to deny it, but to dismantle it as a false dichotomy.
Because the correct question is not “traceability yes or no?”, but “who has access to that traceability, under what conditions, and with what judicial safeguards?”
The difference between a crime prevention system and a mass surveillance system is not whether there is a registry, but rather:
- Proportionality: Is everything recorded or only what is suspicious? Do reasonable thresholds apply (as they already exist for cash)?
- Judicial authorization: Can the data be accessed without a prior court order? Or is there a legal firewall between the payment system and the authorities?
- Transparency: Do we know how many times the system has been used for investigations? Are there annual public reports, as in wiretapping?
- Reversibility: Is the data deleted after a legal period? Or are they stored indefinitely “just in case”?
This is where the DSA, DMA and EMFA are not incompatible with AML/CFT, but complementary.
- DSA it does not prevent a platform from removing illegal content. What it demands is that it be done with transparency, proportionality and the right to appeal. Applied to the digital euro: it is not about preventing a transaction suspected of financing terrorism from being blocked. It is about the citizen having the right to know because was blocked and to complain if it was an error.
- DMA It doesn’t stop Apple from having an app store. What it prohibits is that it abuse its dominant position to discriminate against competitors. Applied to the digital euro: it is not about preventing the ECB from designing the system. This is about not using your position to create a closed ecosystem that stifles innovation.
- EMFA It does not prevent the State from regulating the media. What it prohibits is that it uses its economic or regulatory power to exert editorial pressure. Applied to the digital euro: it is not about preventing the fight against crime. It is that the design of the system does not allow de facto mapping who finances what cause, creating a deterrent effect on civil society.
The key is design from the beginning.
A digital euro designed with “privacy by default” and traceability “under court order” is technically possible. Cryptographic protocols already exist (such as zero-knowledge proofs or differential privacy architectures) that allow verifying that a transaction meets certain criteria (e.g. “it is less than 10,000 euros”) without revealing the details of the transaction itself.
The problem is not technical. It’s incentives. Because a system with full traceability is easier to build, cheaper to operate and more reassuring for bureaucrats.
And this is where Europe must decide whether its commitment to digital rights is rhetoric or architecture.
Concluding: The Decision is Not Technical, It is Political
The debate over the digital euro is not whether the technology is secure or whether settlement is instantaneous. Those are technical problems that will be resolved.
The real question is whether we are building a tool of efficiency or an infrastructure of freedom. The ECB and the European institutions are, by inertia, focused on the first, because that is what they know how to do.
Our job is to force the debate towards the latter.
Europe has the legal tools and institutional maturity to get it right. We have created a robust digital rights framework precisely for this moment. Ignoring it now, in the most important infrastructure project of the century, would not be an oversight. It would be an abdication.
