The rules now being finalised were proposed by the European Commission in June 2023: one regulation making acceptance of euroThe name of the European single currency adopted by the European Council at the meeting held in Madrid on 15-16 December 1995. See ECU. More banknotes and coins mandatory across the euro area, another creating the digital euro. The Council of the European Union — the member-state governments — agreed its common position in December 2025, and the European Parliament adopted its position in mid-2026. Negotiations between the three institutions opened on 13 July 2026, with agreement targeted by the end of the year, when Ireland’s rotating presidency of the Council expires.
On the core principle, there is consensus: euro cashMoney in physical form such as banknotes and coins. More must be accepted as legal tenderMoney that is legally valid for the payment of debts and must be accepted for that purpose when offered. Each jurisdiction determines what is legal tender, but essentially it is anything which when offered (“tendered”) in payment of a debt extinguishes the debt. There is no obligation on the creditor to accept the tendered payment, but the act of tendering the payment in legal tender discharges the debt. More. The disagreement is over the edges of the rule — where the law will stop applying. Two open questions stand out: unmanned devices (parking meters, ticketing and vending machines, self-checkouts) and merchants who refuse cash on claimed security grounds. Exemptions are normal legislative practice. But these two would cover precisely the places where people often lack another option.
The European Central Bank’s 2026 survey on the use of cash by companies suggests the market is not asking for an exit. 92% of companies selling at physical locations accept cash, up from 90% in 2024. Companies cite consumer preference, security and ease of handling when deciding what payment methodSee Payment instrument. More to accept, and they see privacy and reliability as the main advantages of cash over digital payments. Card acceptance remained broadly stable at 88%, while mobile payments jumped from 36% to 68% of companies. Cash is holding its own while digital options multiply around it, and attachment runs strongest among smaller companies — those with the least margin for paymentA transfer of funds which discharges an obligation on the part of a payer vis-à-vis a payee. More costs and technical failures. Blanket exemptions would not help reluctant merchants; they would override willing ones.
One contested exemption concerns refusals justified by security. The riots of 17 October 2026 in France offer a sad illustration. During the worst urban unrest the country has seen in years, looters did not spare banks or ATMs, which were hit alongside electronics stores, supermarkets, luxury goods and sports retailers. Yet one category of loot is conspicuously absent from the exhaustive national coverage: cash. Looters carted off sneakers, cosmetics and telephones — stolen goods resurfaced on online marketplaces within days — but not one report tells of banknotes taken from ATMs, safes or machines. Cash held in secured storage and equipment was evidently not worth the effort when portable, resellable goods were at hand — and the safes and anti-theft systems that secure it are the very technologies available to both stores and unmanned terminals.
That is the practical backdrop to the ECB’s blunt assessment in its Opinion CON/2026/3 of 22 January 2026 on limitations to cash payment proposed by the Dutch Minister for Finance: the safety-based justification for restricting cash acceptance is framed “in very general terms” and presupposes a direct link between cash acceptance and security risk — “yet no supporting evidence is cited”. Card-only terminals have their own vulnerabilities — skimming, tampering, payment fraud and the cyberattacks that have repeatedly knocked out card networks — while cash equipment can be secured by the same means. Any security-based exemption should carry a burden of proof: data showing that accepting cash measurably increases risk, and by how much. Assertion is not evidence.
Unmanned devices differ from the high street in one decisive respect: they are often monopolies. If a car park, a metro ticket machine or a toll road refuses cash, the customer cannot walk to a competitor; they can only comply or walk away. A blanket exemption therefore removes choice itself, and it falls hardest on those with the fewest alternatives: the unbanked, people with limited digital literacy, and anyone who budgets in cash because it is the payment method they can control. The question is particularly sensitive at a time when household budgets are stretched across Europe, and cash remains the budgeting tool of choice for the households with the least room for error.
There is also a resilience dimension European regulators have already acknowledged elsewhere. When EU payment law introduced strong customer authenticationThe process of proving that a banknote or security document is genuine. More, it exempted certain automated terminals precisely because electronic systems at unmanned points of sale cause operational problems — queues, failures, accidents. Add cyberattacks and power cuts, and a digital-only terminal becomes a single point of failure capable of closing a service entirely. Cash, by contrast, works when nothing else does.
The sharpest numbers concern self-checkout. 13% of euro area companies with a physical point of sale have deployed self-checkout terminals, and in 48% of them none of the devices accepts cash. Mixed fleets are common — one cash-capable device among a bank of card-only ones — which turns acceptance into a queue rather than a choice. As more transactions flow through self-checkouts, the option to pay in cash quietly erodes as the machines replace humans.
The same legislation may soon create a second form of central bank moneyA liability of a central bank, including banknotes in circulation and banks’ deposits with the central bank. More with legal tender status: the digital euro. Both the Parliament’s and the Council’s texts agree that a payer must be free to choose between cash and the digital euro. Symmetry should extend to acceptance: whatever obligations and exemptions apply to one legal tender should apply — and only apply — to the other. Asymmetric rules would tilt the field toward whichever instrument is easier to refuse.
The direction of travel is visible beyond the EU institutions. In Sweden, the Riksdag decided in May 2026 that grocery stores and pharmacies with staffed checkouts must accept cash from 1 July 2026, with the government asked to study extending the duty to some public services. Civil preparedness and equal access to essential goods drove the changeThis is the action by which certain banknotes and/or coins are exchanged for the same amount in banknotes/coins of a different face value, or unit value. See Exchange. More. The Netherlands adopted a Cash Payments Act obliging consumer-facing businesses to accept cash payments up to €3,000. Both countries treat exceptions — night hours, unmanned points of sale, security risks — as narrow, defined categories, not general opt-outs. The EU text will land on ground already prepared by national legislators moving the same way.
Three things matter as the negotiations conclude. First, the final wording of the unmanned-device and security exemptions: narrow, evidence-based exceptions, or a general permission to decline cash. Second, whether security-based refusals will require demonstrated causal evidence, as the ECB suggests. Third, whether cash and the digital euro land under symmetric acceptance rules — and whether the EU text ends up stronger or weaker than what the Netherlands and Sweden have already enacted. The deadline is the end of the year.
Beneath the technicalities lies a question of principle. Legal tender is a promise the state makes to its citizens: public moneyFrom the Latin word moneta, nickname that was given by Romans to the goddess Juno because there was a minting workshop next to her temple. Money is any item that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular region, country or socio-economic context. Its onset dates back to the origins of humanity and its physical representation has taken on very varied forms until the appearance of metal coins. The banknote, a typical representati... More that cannot be refused. The public should have the final word on the evolution of cash — and that word is spoken, daily, at the point of sale. If the law lets the choice disappear precisely where there is no alternative, legal tender becomes a narrower promise than it sounds.