Here is a more technical description: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12525-025-00822-7

I am still not quite sure how this would affect my day-to-day (private) payment experience transaction cost etc.

But is has strategic value for Europe:

> [...] European dependencies in critical technologies. A digital euro could mitigate these developments in the medium term if the infrastructure is mainly operated by European companies and if European payment service providers manage to achieve a leading position in the evolving ecosystem for digital euro services.

Some more: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/digital_euro/timeline/profuse...