French Finance Minister Roland Lescure emphasized the need for more euro-based stablecoins and encouraged banks in the EU to explore tokenized deposits on Friday, as reported by Reuters. This marks a potential shift in the French government's and its central bank's stance on the matter.
Lescure expressed his support for Qivalis, a consortium of 12 European banks, including BBVA, ING, UniCredit, and BNP Paribas, which plans to launch a euro-pegged stablecoin in the second half of 2026 to counter US dominance in digital payments. "This is what we need, and this is what we want," Lescure stated, also urging banks to further investigate the launch of tokenized deposits.
He deemed the current volume of euro-pegged stablecoins, compared to those pegged to the US dollar, as "unsatisfactory." This stance differs from that of former Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, who previously led a strict regulatory approach against privately issued fiat-pegged cryptocurrencies, viewing them as a threat to national sovereignty. More recently, Bank of France Governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau warned that stablecoins and tokenized private money could pose a threat to monetary sovereignty during a discussion with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong.