2023-05-24 16:47:02
Let us now return to the concerns aroused by the digital euro, starting with that of the loss of anonymity.
Among the defenders of this thesis is Florian Philippot, a French politician formerly in the National Front. On May 8, 2023, he posted on his Youtube channel, a videoviewed more than 100,000 times, titled: “Digital Euro: the thunderclap!“. The founder of the Les Patriotes movement describes a Europe in the era of the digital euro in which “lhe central bank knows the destination of each of your euros” et “can decide what you use your euros for“. There is “pread no anonymity, there is total control“, he adds.
The concern regarding respect for privacy raised by Mr. Philippot is shared by many Internet users, particularly on Twitter (ici or To be). But not only.
Respect for privacy tops the expected characteristics of a digital euro (43% of contributors) after a public consultation launched by the ECB from 12 October 2020 to 12 January 2021. It is followed by safety with 18% of responses.
Mindful of the need to respect privacy, the ECB is committed To “do not see or store users’ personal data“.
“Central banks will not have access to personal data (they will not be able to see holdings, transaction history or payment habits), but intermediaries, to comply with regulatory requirements, will have access to personal data and transaction data“, indicates Evelien Witlox, appointed head of the digital euro project at the ECB since January 1, 2022, during a seminar with civil society last January.
“It will be necessary to find a compromise between the protection of privacy and certain important public objectives such as the fight against money laundering, the fight against the financing of terrorism or even tax evasion.“, she added.
Because the fight against these forms of crime is part of the missions of the ECB, complete anonymity is therefore not provided for with the digital euro.
Existing practices in data collection
But nothing new here because it already exists, in particular through data collected by private banks. This is also the lot of all digital currencies, of which this new euro will be part. Pour the professor of international banking and financial law at the IEP in Paris, Hubert de Vauplane, “digital currencies are not anonymous. That is to say that it is not possible to abolish any legal, technical or other link between the holder of the currency and the issuer of it.“
The one who is also an expert with of the European Commission and the European Central Bank specifies that“‘it is enough’ to make the link between the instrument and the person to know the identity of the latter, which will necessarily be the case at one time or another of the transaction in digital currency — the only need to apply the regulations relating to the fight against money laundering and the financing of terrorism.“
Beyond the fight against these forms of crime, the collection of private information by banking actors already exists. Tristan Dissaux, postdoctoral researcher at the European Center for Research in Microfinance (CERMi) argues that “don’t be naive, we have a whole bunch of private actors who already collect personal payment data and who would be free to do so in the future without a digital euro“.
Far from promising perfect anonymity, the digital euro could precisely make it possible to better control the collection of this data. This is what the researcher imagines, recalling that “Europe has been very pioneering and driving with the GDPR [Règlement général sur la protection des données]. The digital euro would be an opportunity to have a similar movement in the field of payments“.
In any event, the ECB, maintains that this currency, offline, “could offer a level of privacy close to that of other digital currencies“, especially for small amounts.
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