Exactly, this is not stated enough. We have to grow up with our relationship with political systems, authoritarianism even dictatorship: it happens because of some population dynamics which we may or may not be currently be participating in or regularly encounter. So sure, the question of why cashless has taken off there is interesting, but maybe more importantly we need to think about the current state, what could be the next moves (the consequences), do we want to influence it and targeting what?
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But thinking about currencies and economy in europe is always kinda doomed because the euro is double-locked. No national economic policy actually has a meaning since at most your gonna leverage some power to influence the ECB, but you're never gonna be the one to actually decide. So there is a complicated combat to do cross european countries saying ok we have to re-found the mission and the organization of the ECB, the relationship with national economies. How do we want to keep down inflation: just maintain growth in face of other world economies that actually grow or make ourselves more independent, what do we do when countries have diverging interests, how do we make sure it's regulated and we keep control on it?
I would vouch for a system where euro exists but is restricted to cross-country corporate business and easy traveling: common credit card system where you can transparently withdraw any participating national money at the current nation negociated exchange rate (eg federating by having a star topology instead of a complete graph for exchange rates: "we treat all the others the same"). Additionally the BCE should have a second decision instance (two-chamber-like) basically being the european budget commission but elected by people, not chosen by governments, to ease cross-country political action. And on a more technical/practical level we have to rethink about wire transfers. I don't know much about how SEPA works but it's probably interesting to take a look.