Hello, welcome back to Emlex's weekly podcast.

I'm James Panicki, a senior editor on the Emlex Asia Desk.

It's great to have your company.

Now, digital currencies have a bit of a mixed reputation at the moment, to put it mildly. These are currencies that can only exist electronically with no tangible form,

so no banknotes and no coins to weigh down your pockets.

Digital currencies, of course, include cryptocurrencies, but they also take

in central bank digital currencies. Now, in the European Union, the blocs institutions and the member

states that are part of the Eurozone, so those countries that use the Euro, are set to consider

whether to adopt a digital euro.

It's all at a preliminary stage,

and it's part of a much larger package of financial services policy initiatives that the European Commission is running up the virtual flagpole at the moment.

Nonetheless, the prospect of a digital currency has got people talking.

I know all of this because I've been reading

the recent reports by Catherine Carlson, our Brussels-based financial services correspondent,

and I'm happy to say that Catherine is with us now from the MLEX offices in Brussels. So Katie,

firstly, tell me something about what's in the broader package that the Commission has

published. Hi, James. So the Commission has put out four separate legal proposals as part of its

big push on digital finance. So in that package, which came out on Wednesday, there are two

euro-related proposals. One is establishing the legal basis and some of the design features for a potential

future digital euro, and one is on the legal status, the legal tender status of current

euros. It's also published proposals on open finance, so that's due data sharing between

customers and their financial services providers, and on a revamp of EU payments rules, which

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