Reuters reports that French Finance Minister Roland Lescure said on Friday that the European Union (EU) needs more stablecoins issued in euros and that banks around the EU should look at tokenized deposits. Both the French government and the central bank may be signaling a change of attitude with these remarks.
“That is what we need and that is what we want,” Lescure said, expressing his support for Qivalis, a consortium of twelve European banks that includes BBVA, ING, UniCredit, and BNP Paribas. Qivalis is planning to introduce a euro-pegged stablecoin in the second half of 2026, with the aim of challenging the dominance of digital payments by the United States.
Lescure added:
“I also strongly encourage banks to further explore the launch of tokenised deposits.”
He went on to say that it was “not satisfactory” that there were comparatively less euro-pegged stablecoins traded than dollar-pegged ones.
Challenging Dollar Dominance
Cryptos produced by private parties and tied to national fiat currencies were strongly opposed by former French finance minister Bruno Le Maire, who said that such currencies belonged nowhere in Europe and posed a danger to national sovereignty. And in 2023, La Maire was found to have been associated with an EU paper that exposed the European Commission’s strategy to prevent stablecoins to displace fiat currency.
Bank of France Governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau recently cautioned that stablecoins and tokenized private money might speed up what he saw as a political danger, during a live clash with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong over yields and stablecoins. Money privatization and the subsequent loss of national control over the money supply is the primary danger, he said.
A joint venture formed last year by eleven European banks—among them ING, UniCredit, and BNP Paribas—aims to launch a stablecoin linked to the euro in the second half of 2026. The objective is to provide EU-based companies and consumers with a native Euro digital settlement alternative, bypassing the need to use dollar tokens issued by third parties.
