Then there's convinience. People will be free to transfer money across the continent, and also to friends and family without any costs (some countries have that, some dont).

I'm not sure about that part. If GNU Taler is to serve as the digital euro, that has been designed to be taxable. for this reason when transferring money to a friend instead of a business, that will have to go through a third party that sees the transacting parties and the amount.

Taler is very promising, but with it (or another digital euro implementation) we will still need easy access to regular cash.