Monetary Sovereignty in the EU and the Digital Euro

The concept of monetary sovereignty, as part of the concept of general sovereignty, has attracted most of its academic and political attention in the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis. Recently, it featured prominently in the debates surrounding the Eurosystem’s efforts to bring a digital version of euro cash to the payment markets. In the EU, almost all substantial decisions on monetary policy take place on the Union level, whereas Member States have reserved the right to exhibit emblems of national sovereignty on euro coins. To facilitate digital cross-border payments on a consumer level, the internal market still heavily relies on overseas financial services. Using the concept of monetary sovereignty as a guiding theme, this article examines the central questions of monetary digitalization and autonomy in the EU. It aims to show that many seemingly technical aspects of monetary law can be understood as subsets of more general discourses of EU law, such as the complications arising from European composite administration or the prioritization of behavioural rules or target-oriented standards in EU commercial law.