Last week, a prank call with the European Central Bank’s Christine Lagarde revealed that the upcoming CBDC will have controls on how it is spent. This departs from what the UK has said about its own digital pound.

Recent words from the European Central Bank (ECB) suggest the digital euro might not be as unrestrained as its digital pound counterpart.

In a recent call with a comedian pretending to be Ukraine’s Volodoymr Zelensky, the chair of the ECB, Christine Lagarde, spoke about the EU’s upcoming Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). On the call, Europe’s top banker said she is “personally convinced that we have to move ahead” with the digital euro. 

During the course of the interview, Lagarde admitted there will be an element of control on how people use the digital euro. “There will be control, you’re right. You’re completely right… [a] limited amount of control,” she said. “We are considering whether for very small amounts, anything that is around 300, 400 euros, we could have a mechanism where there is zero control. But that could be dangerous.”

An April 6 tweet from industry observer Watcher Guru mentioned Lagarde’s announcement of plans to launch a digital euro and noted that Lagarde “says there will be control over payments.” It also featured a brief clip of Lagarde elaborating on her plans in an interview.

During the interview, the senior banker indicated that we will know a lot more in October.

Lagarde has been a notable figure in global economics for some time, having previously been the French finance minister and the 11th Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from 2011 to 2019. She has occupied her most recent post as head of the ECB since November 2020. Her comments about control indicate that discussions about Europe’s CBDC being programmable and controllable are happening at very high levels. 

But what is Lagarde talking about?