Cynical me thinks that someone had a meeting like "how are we going to sell this idea to people" and some consultant went "people like crypto, why don't we say it's a digital currency? The term is meaningless, so we're not technically lying".

Nah; there's a separate project for that, with SEPA Instant as the underlying tech. You don't need a 'digital euro' for that; the digital euro is more about having a way to transact without involving banks.

Isn't SWIFT a European payment system already?

SWIFT is a communication layer, but banks still settle money via separate channels. Plus in many instances, international transfers may end up going through a US entity because of the USD's huge liquidity and volumes for FX exchanges; plus the largest banks being USAmerican.