European Parliament demands refusal of Amazon's involvement in the development of digital euro

What’s new? A cross-party coalition of European Parliament members criticized the European Central Bank (ECB) for choosing Amazon to help develop the digital euro. Eero Heinäluoma, a member of Finland's Social Democratic Party, called the American e-commerce giant's reputation for social and fiscal policy questionable. He highlighted the record €746 million fine ($720 million at the time) the company received from data protection regulators in 2021 for allegedly violating privacy rules, CoinDesk reports.

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What else does the publication report? MEP Stéphanie Yon-Courtin called on ECB Executive Board member Fabio Panetta to explain Amazon's choice. In July 2022, she said, Panetta said the digital euro would protect the strategic autonomy of European payments and monetary sovereignty and help avoid market pressures. Three months later, the ECB announced that Amazon had been selected from 54 companies.

Lawmakers from the Green Party went further, calling on the ECB to reverse the decision so as not to undermine the whole project. Ernest Urtasun of the Greens' drew parallels with the now abandoned Libra initiative, in which the participation of “big American company” Facebook (now Meta) in a cryptocurrency project caused “strong opposition.”

Panetta defended the decision, arguing that Amazon was chosen based on predetermined criteria that he was powerless to change. The official also said that the prototypes the company was developing would not be reused in the future. According to Panetta, there are not many companies in Europe that can demonstrate their experience with hundreds of millions of users.

Panetta also emphasized that Amazon received neither financial compensation nor exclusive data about the project or its users for its participation. These assurances, however, caused even more concern among lawmakers. According to Socialist spokesman Jonás Fernández, the lack of a financial reward suggests that the company made a profit in some other way.

What is known about the development of the digital euro? The ECB began searching for partners in late April and received 54 requests from representatives of national banks and multinational technology companies. Of these, three companies, other than Amazon, were chosen. For example, the Spanish bank CaixaBank, which will develop peer-to-peer online payments for the mobile app, and the French payment service Worldline, which will be responsible for the offline version of the digital euro, both will work on the development of the prototype asset. The Italian company Nexi will set up point-of-sale payments.

In July, the ECB named a condition for the success of the digital euro. According to the bank, the asset must be widely accepted by Europeans and become part of their daily lives.