The digital euro is not intended as a substitute for existing products, Bundesbank Executive Board member Burkhard Balz underscored at a joint Bundesbank-Oesterreichische Nationalbank conference where experts and central bankers discussed the usefulness of the digital euro for everyday payments and the financial markets. They also addressed potential challenges associated with its introduction.

Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel, speaking at an event at Ruhr University Bochum, has called for further interest rate steps. Looking to future developments, he said: “In my view, it is by no means certain that interest rates will reach their peak as early as this summer.” He believes that the German economy is well placed to rise to the challenges ahead, even if it did contract over the past two quarters: “With regard to the remainder of the year, our economists are cautiously optimistic. Things should start to pick up again soon, then.”

The National Cash Forum has been established on the initiative of the Bundesbank, the being, as Bundesbank Executive Board member Burkhard Balz put it, to preserve cash as an efficient and widely used means of payment in a changing payment landscape. The forum will facilitate close dialogue between the associations of the banking industry, retail trade, consumer protection, the CIT industry, vending machine operators and the Bundesbank. The industry is set to meet here at least once a year.