French Finance Minister Roland Lescure has emphasized the need for more euro-denominated stablecoins in Europe, urging banks to explore the use of tokenized deposits, as reported by Reuters. This shift in stance is evident within the French government and its central bank. 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, aiming to counter the dominance of the US in digital payments.
"This is what we need, and this is what we want," Lescure stated, also encouraging banks to further investigate the launch of tokenized deposits. He noted that the relatively low volume of euro-pegged stablecoins compared to dollar-pegged ones is "unsatisfactory". In contrast to the previous strict regulatory stance against privately-issued fiat-pegged cryptocurrencies, led by former Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, the current approach seems to be more open to the idea of stablecoins. Le Maire had previously stated that such currencies "had no place on European soil" and posed a threat to "the sovereignty of nations".
More recently, Bank of France Governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau warned that stablecoins and tokenized private money could accelerate the threat of privatization of money and loss of monetary sovereignty.