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The German public believes that the digital euro could be used for surveillance
Germany’s Deutsche Bundesbank has revealed the results of its survey, showing that around 50% of respondents could “generally imagine” using a digital euro.
Lots of people inside Germany they are “open to the idea of digital euro”, according to the Deutsche Bundesbank, the country’s central bank, which published the results of a survey conducted among 2,012 people in April 2024.
According to the results, around half of the respondents “could generally imagine using a digital euro as an additional payment option”.
“In the survey, even people who were previously unfamiliar with the digital euro declared themselves open to this new means of payment. The survey revealed that only 41% of those interviewed had already heard, read or seen some information about the digital euro, while 59% knew nothing about it.”
Deutsche Bundesbank
Yet there are still those who believe that the digital euro was designed to spy on citizens’ payments. Deutsche Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel noted that “a lot of information still needs to be provided,” as 8% of respondents said they believed the digital euro “was intended to monitor the flow of payments.”
“The survey shows us that there is still a lot of information to be provided and that in the preparatory work for the new European means of payment we have set the right priorities, such as privacy protection.”
Joachim Nagel
Burkhard Balz, member of the executive board of the Deutsche Bundesbank responsible for the cash and digital euro project, added that many respondents “still had fragmentary knowledge of the digital euro”, as 16% of respondents still believe that the digital euro will be a cryptocurrency.
“The prices of crypto-assets such as Bitcoin or Ethereum fluctuate strongly. They do not perform the traditional functions of a currency; the stability of their value is not guaranteed by a central bank.”
Burchard Balz
At the beginning of May, the Deutsche Bundesbank revealed that almost 90% of German households “seem open” to the idea of adopting a central bank digital currency (CBDC) during banking stress. At the time, the central bank found that many Germans were mainly open to CBDCs. Even without remuneration, almost half of people said they would agree to the digital euro.