Welcome Address by Evaldas Ruzgys at the Baltic Digital Euro Conference “Diving Into the Digital Euro”

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Welcome Address
Evaldas Ruzgys, Member of the Board of Lietuvos bankas
Baltic Digital Euro Conference “Diving Into the Digital Euro”
Vilnius, 1 October 2026

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests, colleagues and friends.

It is my great pleasure to welcome you to Vilnius and to the Baltic Digital Euro Conference, “Diving Into the Digital Euro.”

On behalf of Lietuvos bankas, I would also like to welcome our colleagues from the European Central Bank, the European Parliament, Eesti Pank and Latvijas Banka, representatives of the banking and payments industry, fintech companies, merchants, associations and all those joining us here today.

I am particularly pleased that we are organising this conference together with our NCB colleagues from Estonia and Latvia.

The Baltic countries may be small in size, but when it comes to digitalisation, financial technology and payments, we have rarely been afraid to move forward. Our societies are highly digital. Consumers are accustomed to paying by card, phone or watch. Instant payments are part of everyday life. Our financial sectors are technologically advanced and closely integrated with the broader European market.
In many ways, therefore, the Baltics are a very good place to have a serious and deep conversation about the future of European payments.

And today, we want this conversation to be practical.

For several years, the digital euro has been discussed as an idea, as a policy initiative and as a possible answer to some fundamental questions about the future of money.

But the project has reached a different stage as of today.

The preparation phase has been completed. Technical work is advancing. Payment service providers are preparing for a pilot planned to begin in the second half of 2027. Work is continuing on areas ranging from the digital euro infrastructure and common standards to offline functionality and the user experience.

Of course, the decision on whether to issue a digital euro has not yet been taken. That decision will only be considered after the European legislative process has been completed.

But if Europe wants to be ready, preparation cannot begin after all the decisions have already been made.

And this is precisely why we are here today.

We want to move the conversation from “What is the digital euro?” towards another question:

“What would it take to make it work?”

Not only technically.

But in the real economy.

For a person standing at a checkout.

For a merchant accepting a payment.

For a bank or payment service provider integrating a new solution into its systems.

And for innovators thinking about services that perhaps do not yet exist today.

This distinction is important.

A payment instrument can be technically sophisticated and still fail to become relevant to people's everyday lives.

For consumers, payments are ultimately very simple today. They expect them to work. They expect them to be fast, convenient, safe and increasingly seamless.

Most consumers will not choose a payment method because they admire its architecture.

They will use it if it makes sense for them.

Merchants will look at the question differently. They will want to understand what accepting the digital euro means for their businesses: how it integrates with their existing infrastructure, what it costs, how reliable it is and whether their customers actually want to use it.

Banks, fintechs and other payment service providers will have yet another perspective. They will need to understand their role in distribution, acquiring, integration and customer relationships – but also where the opportunities for new services and innovation may lie.

That is why designing a digital euro cannot simply be a central bank exercise.

It requires a functioning ecosystem.

And building that ecosystem requires dialogue between the institutions designing the framework and those who will ultimately have to make it work.

This is exactly the discussion we would like to have today.

The programme has deliberately been designed around different perspectives.

First, we will ask what our existing payments landscape in the Baltic countries tells us about the need for a digital euro.

Our region provides a particularly interesting case study. We already have sophisticated digital payments markets. So the relevant question is not simply whether we need another way to make a digital payment.

We need to look deeper: at resilience, at the role of public money in an increasingly digital economy, at integration of the European payments market, and at our ability to maintain reliable payment options under different circumstances.

We will then look at how the digital euro could fit into the existing payments ecosystem.

And the word existing is important.

We are not starting from a blank sheet of paper. Europe already has banks, fintechs, card networks, instant payment solutions, and national and regional payment initiatives that consumers use every day.

The question is therefore not how the digital euro could replace this ecosystem, but how it could become part of it – and potentially make it stronger.

Later today, we will turn specifically to the roles of the different stakeholders.

This may be one of the most important discussions we need to have.

Because behind every seemingly simple payment there is a complex chain of actors, technologies, incentives and responsibilities.

If the digital euro is to work at European scale, we need clarity on how these pieces come together.

And finally, we will discuss innovation.

This is a subject particularly close to us at Lietuvos bankas.

The digital euro should not only respond to the payment needs we have today. We should also ask what kind of innovation it could enable tomorrow.

Could common European standards make it easier for new services to scale across borders?

Could a common platform reduce fragmentation?

Could the digital euro provide infrastructure on top of which banks, fintechs and technology companies develop services that central banks themselves would never build?

These are open questions – and they are exactly the type of questions we want this conference to explore.

There is also a broader point behind today's discussions.

Europe's payments landscape has developed enormously over the last decades. We have benefited from competition, technological progress and international providers that have brought highly efficient services to European consumers.

At the same time, an increasingly digital economy makes the resilience of payment infrastructure more important, not less.

Digital payments are no longer simply a convenience. They are critical infrastructure for our economies and societies.

For the Baltic countries, the importance of resilience should be particularly familiar.

Our experience has repeatedly shown that resilience does not mean isolation. Nor does European strategic autonomy mean turning away from international competition.

For smaller economies especially, resilience often comes from the opposite approach: building strong infrastructure together, creating credible alternatives and working with trusted partners across Europe.

The digital euro gives us an opportunity to think about payments through that lens as well.

But we should also remain realistic.

The success of the digital euro cannot ultimately be measured by whether the necessary software and hardware is developed and deployed.

Nor simply by whether the necessary legislation is adopted.

Success will depend on something much more demanding: whether the digital euro provides genuine value for the customer.

Will people want to use it?

Will merchants see value in accepting it?

Will payment service providers be able to build sustainable and innovative services around it?

And can we achieve all of this while preserving the qualities that citizens rightly expect from public money – trust, security, accessibility and privacy?

These questions cannot be answered by central banks alone.

And that is why I am very glad to see such a diverse group in this room today.

We may not agree on every aspect of the digital euro – and I do not think the purpose of today's conference is that we should.

The purpose is to bring the different perspectives into the same conversation early enough that they can genuinely contribute to the outcome.

So I would encourage all of you to use today not simply to present established positions, but to ask difficult questions.

Tell us where you see opportunities.

Tell us where you see challenges.

And, importantly, tell us what needs to happen in practice for the digital euro to bring real value to Europe’s payments landscape.

We have an excellent programme ahead of us.

In a moment, Paulius Saudargas, Member of the European Parliament, will take a broader European perspective and discuss why the digital euro matters for Europe.

Afterwards, Evelien Witlox, Director Digital Euro at the European Central Bank, will bring us closer to the project itself and explain what the digital euro is – and what it is not.

And from there, we will dive deeper through our four panel discussions – from the Baltic payments landscape to integration with the existing ecosystem, stakeholder roles and, finally, innovation.

I would like to thank all our speakers and panellists for joining us, our colleagues from Eesti Pank and Latvijas Banka for organising this conference together with us, and everyone at Lietuvos bankas who has worked to make today's event possible.

And, of course, thank you to all of you for being here and contributing your expertise to this discussion.

I hope that by the end of today we will leave not only with a better understanding of the digital euro, but also with a clearer picture of what it will take to make it work in practice.

With that, it is my pleasure to open the Baltic Digital Euro Conference.

I wish all of us an interesting, open and productive discussion.

Thank you.

Payments, Digital euro