Digital euro: because money is the Armageddon of sovereignty
The journey to the Zeitgest of Europe continues, during the European semester as president of Angela Merkel. Gianni Bessi's post
Traveling in the heart of Europe and its nerve centers, a few days ago we find ourselves in our Rome. Sometimes it almost crosses our mind that this is where the foundations of the Union were laid in the late 1950s. The occasion that brings us back to our homeland is the hearing in the Senate of the Republic of the Minister of Economy and Finance Roberto Gualtieri to share the results of the Ecofin on 6 October and 4 November; it is the important council of economics and finance ministers of all member states, responsible for EU policy in three main areas: economic policy, taxation issues and financial services regulation.
Among the numerous passages and the related Englishisms around the political agreements on the Recovery and Relience Facility, a theme that returns several times and that strikes us concerns the Digital Finance Package, or the role that digital will have both for finance and for the more local economies , identified as an indispensable dimension to be included in future projects. The focus is on the definition of an approach common to all EU countries, such as to allow a shared and coordinated approach with respect to the opportunities of the digital market, and which also allows the risks to be assessed according to a unitary paradigm.
Linear speeches that are difficult not to share, with that attention to the future that is easy to accept as far-sighted but not so distant as not to be understood. At least until we jump in the chair when the digital euro is mentioned. Shortly before, there was talk of cryptocurrencies and cryptomarket. Will beating digital money be one of the points on the agenda of the European Central Bank? At first glance it seems so. Physical currency, that traditional devilry and its sulphurous smell that has accompanied the human economic and social adventure for centuries, is a topic we have already mentioned in our travel diary. We are supported by the analyzes of Corazza, who skilfully underlined the close relationship between sovereignty and money. The latter is in fact a crucial instrument for controlling the market (and society), and if these become digital, money must also follow them in order not to lose grip. All this – Filippo Onoranti points out to me, who also wrote a valid vademecum on the subject – in the days when the first digital currency born from the free world, Bitcoin, returns after a couple of years under the track of its all-time highs.
A question that may arise spontaneously is what the emphasis of the words of the executive vice-president of the Dombrovskis commission on the subject of the digital package and the digital euro has to do with the outcome of the European Council of Ministers for Economy and Finance in this 2020 that Covid has upset.
But perhaps it is enough to listen to the vice-president of the ECB de Guindos who defined the digital euro project as a necessity, especially following the pandemic. It looks like the stuff of great European bankers.
And in fact that is precisely what we Italians represent.
And not only for the glorious history of the first Italian bankers of the Renaissance … even if some of the institutions that have their roots in so much history, such as Monte dei Paschi di Siena, have lost part of their ancient splendor, reverberating their crisis on the ministry of Italian Economy and Finance and its commitments to sell 68.2% of the Institute, opening a risk on banks in the Covid era that is destabilizing Unicredit. A European match that could involve France, Italy, Poland, Turkey, Russia.
However, we are the third largest shareholder of the ECB with over 12% of the shares, after a scant 18% in Germany and 14% in France. And the three of us hold more than 50% of the national shares of this institution, therefore among the great European bankers, we Italians have a very first-rate position. After all, Draghi's eight-year guide to the ECB was not a whim of history.
And being in Rome we cannot fail to remember, walking along via Nazionale in front of the neo-renaissance Palazzo Koch, how the great project of the digital euro has the experience of the Bank of Italy and Fabio Panetta president behind it, always to follow the English style of finance, Hltf-Cbdc an acronym that indicates the Eurosystem on the central bank digital currency.
This is why we must wake up from our torpor, or rather from our bad habit of considering Europe as a counterpart, as we also happen to relate to our own state. While we are an important part of it and being protagonists of it depends only on our choice.
As Merkel teaches, who in the last months of her mandate as presidency of the European semester has repeatedly reiterated the strategic and indispensable role of European technological sovereignty (2); everything flows predominantly into the theme, apparently only economic but in reality based on an underlying of Information Technology and finance (and also of energy …), and therefore of the European digital currency. The digital euro confirms that the big ball between central banks is only just beginning. The journey continues.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/euro-digitale-perche-la-moneta-e-larmageddon-della-sovranita/ on Sat, 05 Dec 2020 06:03:39 +0000.