CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Bikaj, Alberta |
|---|---|
| Title | The Digital Euro and Privacy in the EU: An Evaluation of Legal, Technical, and Economic Trade-Offs |
| Summary | This thesis evaluates whether the European Central Bank’s proposed digital euro can offer meaningful privacy within the boundaries of EU regulation. As digital payments grow and cash usage declines, privacy in payment systems becomes more economically and politically relevant. In the EU context, this intersects with strong legal standards, including the General Data Protection Regulation, the ePrivacy Directive, anti-money laundering rules, and the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation. The research questions if meaningful privacy can be met by both regulatory requirements and user expectations. The analysis takes a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, drawing on regulatory texts, policy documents, technical papers, as well as global CBDC case studies. The findings suggest that the current design provides limited privacy and relies on institutional choices rather than hard guarantees. While some privacy features are included, their scope is constrained by legal, technical, and economic trade-offs. Case studies indicate that privacy preserving CBDC models are feasible but require clearer prioritization of tradeoffs. The thesis concludes that privacy remains a core feature of trust in public money and should be considered an integral component of the digital euro’s design. |
| Supervisor | Lee, Soomin |
| Department | Economics MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/bikaj_alberta.pdf |
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