Chiara Scotti: From the Winter Olympics to the digital euro. A dialogue between academia and central banks
Speech by Ms Chiara Scotti, Deputy Governor of the Bank of Italy, at the "6th Dolomiti Macro Meeting", organised by Free University of Bozen, BI Norwegian Business School, Centre for Applied Macroeconomics and Commodity Prices (CAMP), Bozen, 20 June 2026.
INTRO
Ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues,
As some of you may know, I have a real passion for sports - and the Winter Olympics hold a special place in that passion. So it is a particular pleasure to be here in these valleys, only a few months after they hosted the Winter Games.
But the Olympics are not only a celebration of sport. They are also a very visible test of infrastructure: transport, connectivity, accommodation and, increasingly, payments.
Over the last eleven editions of the Games (since 1988), non-cash payments by spectators watching the competitions live have been intermediated exclusively by one provider, under an agreement with the Olympic Committee signed in 1986. Yet the 2026 edition was the first in which this arrangement sparked a public debate in the press.
Why now? Digital payments are no longer a convenience at the margin of economic life. They have become part of its basic infrastructure. And when a service becomes essential, questions about its openness, efficiency and resilience become public-interest questions.
This is the starting point of my remarks today. The digital euro is not primarily about creating digital payments. Digital payments already exist, and many of them work very well. The question is whether Europeans should continue to have access to public money as their economic lives become increasingly digital.
The digital euro is about preserving the singleness of money, supporting efficiency and resiliency in an increasingly digital and fragmented payment ecosystem, and ensuring that public money continues to serve citizens in a digital society.