I'm pretty sure a big goal is to fight tax evasion.

I can't speak for all of EU, but here in Austria tax evasion is very common.

For example, it's still extremely common to pay contractors under the table. They will ask you if you need an invoice, and the price will be a lot lower if you don't.

Another example are restaurants. For a few years it has been required that restaurants always provide you with a receipt, but especially asian restaurants still don't do so.

All that untaxed revenue costs the state billions in missing taxes.

If you limit cash payments, then you make it at least slightly harder for someone to eg. buy a car with that untaxed money.

I really don't see any reason why you would need 10k€ cash payments if not for tax evasion.

> I really don't see any reason why you would need 10k€ cash payments if not for tax evasion.

To avoid banking fees?

There are no fees for bank transfers in Europe.

There are. Not international fees as such but there are bank to bank fees.

I have not seen a SEPA wire transfer cost more than 1€ since SEPA wire transfers have existed. Which would make the fee at most 0.01% for >10k€ payments.

Regardless of how small the fee, there is a fee that you are being forced to pay.

The most that I have ever payed is 1€. I have been paying 0€ for the last 5 years or so. Is that still a fee?

"Oh lultimouomo", you say, "the were transfer might be nominally free but sure having a bank has other costs involved". No fixed cost, yrgulation, so by the very fact of having a bank account, depositing money in it and taking it back by wire transfer or ATM you are never paying a fee. Also, cash has a cost. You risk being mugged, you risk getting a wrong change by the cashier, the store risks a robbery / break in (and most often pays expensive insurance to protect itself against this)

A fee of €0.50 would be on the high side for a transfer of €10000.

What if the government is tyrannical or arbitrarily seizes your funds?

Not sure why you are getting downvoted. The government of cyprus did seize bank deposits during the 2013 crisis. In some european countries i spoke to people who worried the same will have happened during the onset of covid and then the war started by russia.

It's to phase out cash. Can't be a good citizen unless every transaction is logged and monitored!

It's a promotion of barter.

(I understand in this tree the '/S' is taken for granted.)

It's a guerilla marketing campaign for Monero ;)

and in 5 years, you'll be using the great new CBDC! so the ECB can automatically remove your money to comply with negative interest rates!

At least with CBDC there seems to be a way planned for anonimity:

> There are two types of retail CBDCs. They differ in how individual users access and use their currency: // Token-based retail CBDCs are accessible with private/public keys. This method of validation allows users to execute transactions anonymously // Account-based retail CBDCs require digital identification to access an account // The two types of CBDCs, wholesale and retail, are not mutually exclusive[ - i]t is possible to develop both and have them function in the same economy

Pretty important, because currently having anonymous electronic transaction is heavily difficult.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/central-bank-digital-cu...

By the time Madame Lagarde is done a lot of people will be praying to still have something in the bank to pay negative interest for.

With the current inflation €10.000 will be worth far less in the near future, and I'm certain the amount won't be updated yearly to account for that. This 10k "magic number" has stayed the same for a long time. This isn't about money laundering as much as about control over even relatively low value cash transactions.

Lagarde is a criminal with connections... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38369822 "A French court has found International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde guilty of negligence but did not hand down any punishment."

Well at least it's not "think of the children" this time

or to protect the children