Description

About the Seminar
CBDCs have been a central issue in monetary policy discussions for several years. Central banks around the world have considered the issuance of CBDCs with end-user access and, in some cases, have already launched concrete pilot projects. Within the European Union, the European Commission’s proposal for a Regulation on the establishment of a digital euro (COM(2023) 369) has intensified the debate—also from a legal perspective—on the issuance of a euro-denominated retail CBDC and has significantly increased the likelihood of a digital euro being introduced. However, its implementation raises legal questions regarding the legal nature of CBDCs, the competence of the ECB to issue a sovereign digital currency, and its liabilities as the issuing authority. Additionally, these questions are closely linked to the private-law relationships between users and digital currency units and the role of payment service providers as intermediaries.

About the Speaker
Dr. Aurelia Philine Birne is a German-qualified lawyer and postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for the Law and Regulation of Digitalization (IRDi) at the University of Marburg, Germany. She also serves as an editor of “Recht Digital”, a German law journal focused on topics related to digitalization. Her research focuses on general private law, payment services, and financial services law, with a particular focus on (digital) means of payment and crypto-assets. Dr. Birne has been a visiting researcher at New York University School of Law, the City University of New York, and the University of Bern in Switzerland. In addition to her academic work, she is a prospective LL.M.-candidate at the University of Cambridge, UK, as a member of the class of 2025/2026.