Artificial intelligence and fast-improving humanoid robots are pushing Europe into a new policy debate, not just about productivity, but about income security and access to essential services. If more work is automated, governments may face pressure to expand universal basic income (UBI) or universal basic services (UBS), and the digital euro could become an important way to distribute public money quickly, securely, and at scale.
In the near term, AI adoption is already reshaping labour markets and workplace practices, with EU-level research warning that algorithmic management and AI tools can expand worker exposure to automated decision-making. At the same time, humanoid robotics is moving from demonstrations to early commercial tests, with pilots in industrial settings and high-profile claims about large-scale deployment timelines.
These trends do not guarantee mass unemployment, but they do increase uncertainty around job stability, wage bargaining power, and the distribution of productivity gains. That uncertainty is one reason UBI and UBS keep returning to the political agenda, even when governments disagree on costs and design.
UBI aims to provide regular cash payments with minimal conditions, while UBS focuses on guaranteeing essential services, such as healthcare, education, housing, transport, and connectivity, typically free at the point of use. In practice, most real-world approaches blend elements of both, for example, targeted guaranteed income schemes and strengthened public services.
Why the Digital Euro Matters for UBI and UBS
If the EU or euro area countries ever expanded recurring cash transfers or emergency support, the hardest operational problem would be reliable distribution: getting money to people instantly, safely, and cheaply, including during outages or crises. That distribution role is one of the clearest “public interest” use cases for a retail CBDC.
Recent EU Council positioning backs a digital euro design with both online and offline functionality, and stresses that basic digital euro services should be free, with holding limits used as a financial-stability guardrail. The ECB also emphasises cash-like privacy for offline payments, where only the payer and payee know the transaction details.
For UBI-style transfers, a digital euro could support:
- Immediate, euro-area-wide payouts through supervised intermediaries, reducing delays common in bank-transfer based benefit systems.
- Resilience via offline capability, important for crisis payments when networks or power fail.
- Lower distribution friction if “basic services” are mandated free, making small, frequent transfers economically viable.
For UBS, the logic is different. UBS is often delivered as services rather than cash, but public reimbursement flows still matter: governments paying providers, subsidising access, or refunding citizens. The digital euro could become a standard public rail for these payments, while keeping the instrument itself neutral.
A key political constraint is programmability. The ECB has repeatedly stated the digital euro “will never be programmable money,” meaning it would not be restricted to predefined purposes. That does not prevent governments from running normal policy programmes (eligibility rules, tax administration, benefits compliance). It means the currency itself should not embed “voucher-like” controls by default, a distinction designed to address surveillance and coercion concerns.
The open question for policymakers is less technical than constitutional: how to use modern payment rails for social policy without turning money into a behavioural instrument. If AI and humanoids accelerate calls for UBI or expanded UBS, the digital euro debate will increasingly be judged on this distribution trade-off: speed and resilience, matched with strong limits on control and data access.