A member of the executive board of the European Central Bank (ECB), Mr. Piero Cipollone, is promoting the digital euro in his speech Empowering Europe: boosting strategic autonomy through the digital euro.

He also pays attention to cash:

The vital role of cash in ensuring financial inclusion and resilience
Despite the rapid digitalisation of retail payments, cash remains a cornerstone of the European financial system and is currently our only sovereign means of payment.
The continued strong demand for cash [4] highlights the importance of ensuring that it remains a convenient, secure and universally accepted means of payment and store of value.
Cash ensures financial inclusion, but it also plays a crucial role in maintaining the resilience of our payment systems and economies. In times of crisis, for example during cyberattacks or power failures, cash provides a reliable fall-back option. We have also seen this during the natural disasters that have affected parts of the euro area over the past year.
Against this background, the Eurosystem is fully committed to ensuring that cash remains a widely available and accepted means of payment for everyone in Europe. We have implemented a comprehensive cash strategy [5], and we are redesigning euro banknotes to make them fit for the future.
Moreover, the ECB strongly welcomes the proposed regulation governing the legal tender status of euro banknotes and coins. As we explained in our opinion, the regulation should clearly prohibit ex ante unilateral exclusions of cash by retailers or service providers. It should also ensure that Member States will hold the banking sector responsible for providing essential cash services to both private and corporate customers, ensuring good access to facilities for withdrawing and depositing euro cash across the euro area. [6]

[4] The total value of euro banknotes in circulation is currently just below €1.6 trillion. And banknotes circulate rapidly: in 2024 the value of banknotes supplied by banks to their customers was at a similar level, just above €1.6 trillion.
[5] The Eurosystem cash strategy aims to ensure that cash remains widely available and accepted as both a means of payment and a store of value. See also ECB (2025), “ECB selects motifs for future euro banknotes”, press release, 31 January.
[6] This approach ensures legal certainty for in-person payments and is aligned with the provisions laid down in the digital euro draft regulation. See Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the legal tender of euro banknotes and coins, European Commission, COM(2023) 364 final, 28 June 2023 and Opinion of the European Central Bank of 13 October 2023 on a proposal for a regulation on the legal tender of euro banknotes and coins (CON/2023/31).

His conclusion is that is is time to act, making progress on both the digital euro regulation and the regulation on the legal tender status of cash.