European Central Bank Executive Board member Piero Cipollone said the digital euro, planned for launch in 2029, will be designed so the Eurosystem is structurally unable to link individuals to specific transactions. He said offline payments would be visible only to the payer and payee, while online payments would be identifiable only by banks for anti-money laundering purposes. Cipollone said the digital euro would coexist with banknotes and would not replace cash. Civil society groups including Austria’s Epicenter.works disputed the privacy assurances, arguing that protections rely more on institutional commitments than hard technical enforcement and could be weakened during implementation or judicial interpretation.