School Project: Digital Euro

The Digital Euro and the democratic legitimation of Central Banks

The school materials provide a potential teaching concept for secondary schools regarding the topic of “The Digital Euro and the democratic legitimation of Central Banks”. It combines theoretical concepts of democratic legitimacy of independent institutions in multi-level systems with the issues of digital transformation featuring the example of the Digital Euro.

In five consecutive units, the structure of the European banking system as well as the outstanding position of the independent European Central Bank with its main objective of ensuring price stability are presented and explained.

One of its main focuses is the derivation and justification of central bank independence and the extent to which it can be justified, taking into account social-scientific concepts of legitimation and, moreover, obligations and legal implications of the European treaties. Another focus lies on the presentation of the European project of the “Digital Euro”, in particular its underlying considerations, possible advantages or disadvantages, and what its potential (technical) design might be. As the scope of this ECB project goes beyond monetary policy, it faces various legal challenges regarding its democratic legitimation; the materials present this issue in a comprehensible manner that is appropriate for a student audience.

Overall, the school materials include five PowerPoint presentations, which briefly touch upon the presented issues and, besides that, propose a potential study schedule to facilitate the first steps into this interdisciplinary and therefore didactically challenging topic. In addition, we designed two worksheets regarding the functions and use cases of different types of money (cash, digital euro, fiat money, and “cryptocurrencies”), their associated advantages and disadvantages, and which monetary functions might be assigned to each of them. These worksheets may be used for self-study or an additional sixth unit.

In case of interest or further questions, please contact Sophie Louise Nippel or write a mail to Digitaler.Euro.