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.
Common Market Law Review