First competition-law opinion on the digital euro calls the ECB's payment infrastructure an economic activity

Finanzwende Recherche published a legal opinion by Prof. Dr. Thomas Weck (Frankfurt School of Finance & Management) that is the first competition-law examination of the digital euro's planned design. It draws a line through the project: issuing and using the digital euro is sovereign monetary policy, so the Eurosystem there acts as a public authority and not as an undertaking - but the base payment infrastructure the Eurosystem would build and run is an economic activity, and has to be measured against competition law.

The opinion concludes the digital euro as currently designed is justifiable, because the statutory advantages attached to that infrastructure are defensible by their contribution to monetary policy, and it points the legislator at large private stablecoins from Big Tech as the risk the design has to be judged against.

The objection European acquirers, PSPs and card schemes have raised against the digital euro has always been competitive rather than monetary: a public rail with statutory acceptance obligations competing with private acceptance infrastructure. This is the first time that objection has been worked through as a competition-law question rather than a lobbying position, and the answer is split - the ECB does not get a blanket carve-out for the infrastructure layer, but the advantages it would enjoy there are held to be justified.

For the trilogue it hands both sides something: the industry gets the principle that the infrastructure is contestable in competition-law terms, the ECB gets the conclusion that the current design survives it.

Whether the infrastructure-as-economic-activity distinction turns up in the trilogue text or in EPI's and the schemes' submissions, and whether any acquirer body cites the opinion in the Regulation's remaining stages.

• finanzwende-recherche.de
• IT Finanzmagazin, 7 Sep 2026