In recent months, social media platforms have been flooded with posts claiming that “Europe has outlawed cash,” “financial freedom is over,” and that the digital euro will usher in an era of total financial surveillance. These narratives are typically framed in dramatic, almost dystopian terms, portraying recent EU regulatory developments as an unprecedented power grab over citizens’ money.

While such claims are effective at capturing attention, they obscure the more complex – and more interesting – constitutional questions raised by the regulation of cash, the introduction of a digital euro, and the increasing use of a programmable financial infrastructure. This article approaches the issue not from a monetary policy or ”crypto-evangelist” perspective, but through the lens of constitutional law, fundamental rights, and democratic accountability.

Improper Limits on the Right to Property?

The European Union’s recent anti-money laundering reforms introduce a cap on large-value cash transactions, most prominently a €10,000 threshold. Contrary to widespread claims, this does not amount to a ban on cash as legal tender. Instead, it restricts the use of cash in specific transactional contexts, primarily to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. In that respect, however, the underlying regulatory logic is not new: comparable threshold and reporting obligations have long been accepted in relation to wire transfers and other monitored financial transactions, both in the EU and the United States. The constitutional question, therefore, is not whether any monetary transaction may be subject to control, but whether extending similar limitations to cash use remains proportionate and sufficiently justified.

From a constitutional standpoint, this raises a familiar question: does limiting the use of cash interfere with the right to property? If so, is such an interference justified under public interest considerations? The ECHR provides a few key examples for such causes for justifiable interference, such as national security, the protection of public order, or maintaining law and order, which all squarely fit the narrative of the current EU rules presented herein.

European constitutional traditions, as well as the case law of the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union, consistently treat property rights as non-absolute. Restrictions are permissible where they pursue a legitimate aim, are prescribed by law, and satisfy the requirements of necessity and proportionality. The legal debate, therefore, is not whether the state may regulate the use of money, but whether the chosen regulatory technique strikes a fair balance between public interests and individual autonomy.

The Digital Euro: Legal Design, Not Technological Destiny

The digital euro is currently being developed as a form of central bank digital currency (CBDC) under the auspices of the European Central Bank. At this stage, it remains a legal and institutional project rather than a finalized monetary instrument. Crucially, no binding legal act mandates its introduction, nor does existing EU law define it as a replacement for cash.

Public discourse often depicts the digital euro as inherently programmable, traceable, and subject to political control. Yet programmability is not a natural feature of digital money; it is a legal and institutional choice. Whether transaction limits, spending conditions, or expiry dates are embedded into a digital currency depends entirely on the normative framework governing its use.

This distinction matters. The constitutional concern is not the digital nature of the euro, but whether its legal architecture preserves core principles such as financial privacy, legal certainty, and effective judicial review. Without enforceable safeguards, assurances of privacy and neutrality remain political commitments rather than constitutional guarantees.

Lessons from Smart Contracts and Judicial Practice

If the real concern is the embedding of regulatory choices into technical systems, then the key constitutional issue is not automation as such, but the safeguards surrounding it. In the context of a possible digital currency, at least three such safeguards seem essential.

First, any restrictionembedded in the system must have a clear legal basis. If digital money could be made subject to transaction limits, conditional use, or automated compliance filters, those constraints should be determined by legislation rather than by opaque technical design or broad administrative discretion.

Second, automated decisions affecting the use of money must remain reviewable. If a payment is blocked, delayed, or flagged by the system, the individual concerned must be able to know the reason, challenge the outcome, and obtain human review. Otherwise, the exercise of public or quasi-public power risks becoming practically uncontestable.

Third, institutional responsibility must remain attributable. Where monetary functions are implemented through code, it must still be possible to identify who made the relevant normative choice: the legislator, the regulator, the central bank, or a technical intermediary acting on their behalf. Constitutional accountability becomes fragile where responsibility is diffused across institutions and software architecture.

Recent judicial practice concerning smart contracts is useful precisely because it illustrates these points. Courts have increasingly rejected the notion that automated execution can displace ordinary legal control. In other words, the fact that an outcome is produced automatically does not mean that it ceases to be legally contestable. Code may execute a rule, but it cannot by itself settle whether that rule is lawful, proportionate, or compatible with fundamental rights.

This is directly relevant to debates on programmable money. Hypothetically, if a digital currency were designed in such a way that certain transactions could only occur under pre-defined conditions, the legal regulation would no longer operate only through external rules addressed to citizens; it would also operate internally, through the infrastructure of payment itself. The constitutional importance of this shift lies in the fact that technical execution may make restrictionsmore effective, but also less visible and harder to challenge unless strong safeguards are built in from the outset.

The Core Constitutional Question: Infrastructure and Power

At its core, the debate surrounding cash limits and the digital euro is not about technology, but about power and control over essential, critical infrastructure. Monetary systems shape the conditions of participation in economic and social life. As such, changes to their structure inevitably raise constitutional concerns and may even engage with the debate on essential state functions.

The real risk is not an immediate transition to a cashless society, but a gradual shift in which regulatory decisions are embedded in technical systems without sufficient democratic oversight. Comparable developments in other fields already show why this matters. In welfare administration, automated decision-making systems have demonstrated how technical processes can affect access to essential services while making responsibilitydifficult to trace. In the banking sector, automated compliance and fraud-detection mechanisms have already led to situations in which accounts or transactions are restricted with limited explanation and weak avenues of redress. These examples are not identical to a future digital euro, but they illustrate the broader constitutional lesson: once legal control is exercised through infrastructure, accountability must be designed into the system from the beginning.  Where legal guarantees are replaced by policy statements, and accountability mechanisms lag behind technological implementation, constitutional protections become fragile.

Conclusion

Neither cash regulation nor the digital euro inevitably leads to a surveillance-based financial order. However, both developments demand close constitutional scrutiny. The critical task for constitutional discourse is to ensure that innovations in financial infrastructure are accompanied by clear legal limits, effective remedies, and democratic control.

The future of money in Europe is not predetermined by technology. It will be shaped by law– and by the willingness of constitutional institutions, courts, and scholars to insist that fundamental rights do not dissolve at the point where money becomes digital.

Réka Kérész is a final year law student at the Széchenyi István University, Ferenc Deák Law School in Győr, Hungary.  Her main research includes AI, Space Law, Constitutional Law, International Law, and the combination of the these.