The Digital Euro: How CBDC Can Shape Tomorrow’s Payments Landscape

June 30, 2023

10:00 am

SAST

Seminar Room, Fourth Floor, School of Economics, Middle Campus, UCT

Details

This is an in-person and online event. No registration required.

Date: Friday, 30th June 2023

Start time: 10:00 AM SAST

Duration: 1 hour

Speaker: Burkhard Balz

Affiliation: Deutsche Bundesbank

Location: Seminar Room, Fourth Floor, School of Economics, Middle Campus, UCT

About

The School of Economics at the University of Cape Town, in collaboration with the SouthAfrican Reserve Bank Chair in Financial Stability Studies, is pleased to host Burkhard Balz, Executive Board Member from the Deutsche Bundesbank for a seminar on Friday 30 June.

Speaker Profile

Burkhard Balz has served on the Bundesbank’s Executive Board since September 2018 and is responsible for Directorates General Payments andSettlement Systems, Economic Education, and International Central Bank Dialogue. From 2009 up until joining the Deutsche Bundesbank, the law graduate and trained bank clerk was a Member of the European Parliament, where he sat on the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and served as the financial policy spokesman of the European People’s Party (EPP) between 2014 and 2018. In his role as rapporteur, Burkhard presented reports on, inter alia, Latvia’s accession to the euro area, the Solvency II Directive, and regulations pertaining to the European Supervisory Authorities.

Between 2014 and 2018, he was a member of the EPP Group Bureau. He was also a member of the ASEAN delegation of the European Parliament. Burkhard was Chair of the European Parliamentary Financial Services Forum from 2014 to 2018 and also chaired the EP– Hong Kong Friendship Group. Prior to his membership of the European Parliament, Burkhard held various positions at Commerzbank AG in Hanover, where he most recently headed the department for institutional clients.

Deutsche Bundesbank

The Deutsche Bundesbank is the independent central bank of the Federal Republic of Germany. It has formed part of the Eurosystem since 1999, sharing responsibility with the other national central banks and the European Central Bank for the single currency, the euro.

The Bundesbank's core business area is the Eurosystem Monetary Policy with a focus on price stability. As such, it advises the German Federal Government on issues of monetary policy. Additionally, it performs key tasks at a national level through banking supervision, cash management, foreign reserve management and payment systems.

The Bundesbank is headed by an executive board. Of its six members, half are nominated by the Federal Government and half by the Bundesrat (Germany's upper house of parliament), and all are appointed by the German President. The Bundesbank is independent of instructions from third parties, also from the Federal Government.

Source: adapted from core tasks of the Bundesbank 18.05.2020, see full article.