Slovakia adds right to cash payments in constitution over digital euro fears

Everyone has the right to pay for the purchase of goods and services in cash, says a new amendment to the Slovak constitution that was passed last week with the support of 111 MPs and is meant to protect physical payments from a future in which the digital euro becomes mandatory.

The new amendment was proposed by the Identity and Democracy-aligned Sme Rodina party.

“It is very important that there is a provision in the Constitution based on which we can defend ourselves in the future against any orders from the outside, saying there can only be digital euro and no other payment options,” said MP Miloš Svrček, one of the law’s authors during a parliamentary debate.

The EU Commission’s digital euro proposal is expected to arrive on 28 June. Similar to cryptocurrencies, the digital euro could be used for digital payments, but would be controlled by the European Central Bank. However, both institutions insist it is only a supplement, not a cash replacement.

“It may be initially sold as an alternative, but gradually it will become apparent that it can only be exclusive,” said liberal MP Marián Viskupič of the digital euro plans. He warned that it would bring about “monitoring of a person’s entire life” by the ECB and called it “a social engineer’s dream”. Far-right MPs also joined in threatening the “total loss of privacy” the digital euro would bring.

Parliament also passed an amendment put forward by Viskupič, which gives shopkeepers the right to refuse cash payments for “appropriate or generally applicable reasons”. This is meant to protect card-only vending machines or shopkeepers worried about robberies or germs on banknotes and coins.

The amendment might mean that the right to cash is now weaker than before. Previously applicable central bank law limited refusal of cash payment to “legal” reasons, and a 2010 Commission recommendation also says refusing cash should only be allowed in “good faith” cases, for example, when the vendor has no change.

(Barbara Zmušková | EURACTIV.sk)

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