In October 2026, a Belgian bank cut off DiEM25’s access to its own bank account, locking away tens of thousands of euros in donations from our members.

The consequences were immediate as staff salaries, office rent and social security contributions went unpaid. The bank offered no specific explanation, leaving a political movement unable to access the funds it had collected to carry out its work.

This should alarm anyone who believes that democratic participation must be protected from private interests. How can a private bank have the power to effectively paralyse a political movement simply by deciding to withdraw its banking services? And why should citizens, organisations and businesses have no meaningful public alternative when a bank decides to shut them out?

The problem extends far beyond just us. Across Europe, access to money and the ability to make and receive payments remain overwhelmingly dependent on private financial institutions. Banks can terminate relationships, restrict access to funds and disrupt people’s economic lives, while those affected are left scrambling for alternatives. At the same time, across Europe, instances of debanking are becoming increasingly commonplace, disproportionately affecting progressive organisations.

Europe has allowed private banks to become gatekeepers to an essential public function, without providing a universal public alternative.

A public alternative already makes perfect sense

We have long proposed the creation of a Public Digital Payments Platform (PDPP), a publicly operated digital payments system available in every European country. Its basic principle is straightforward: every taxpayer would automatically receive a digital reserve account through their national tax authority, linked to their tax identification number.

Using a secure PIN, citizens could transfer credits between accounts, pay taxes and make payments to other account holders. The system could be accessed through an online platform, with state-issued debit cards and smartphone applications providing everyday payment functionality. Such a platform would offer a low-cost public alternative to private payment networks.

Most importantly, it would ensure that access to a basic payments infrastructure was a public guarantee rather than a privilege granted by a private financial institution.

So why doesn’t this already exist in Europe?

The technology is hardly revolutionary, with governments already operating digital tax systems, maintaining taxpayer records and processing electronic payments. Building a public payments infrastructure on top of these existing systems is a political choice, not some distant technological ambition.

A PDPP would bring greater transparency and security to public payments, reduce transaction costs and provide an alternative when private banking services are withdrawn or disrupted. It would also reduce the concentration of power in the hands of a small number of private financial institutions.

And that is precisely where the political question lies. European governments have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to protect the interests and stability of the banking sector. Yet they have shown remarkably little ambition to build public alternatives that would reduce banks’ control over essential financial infrastructure.

The debanking of DiEM25 is a reminder of what this dependence means in practice. No political movement, civil society organisation or citizen should have their economic participation placed entirely at the discretion of a private bank.

The question left to ask is not what do we need in order to build an alternative to private banking, but why we haven’t done so yet.

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