According to Reuters, French Finance Minister Roland Lescure emphasized the need for more euro-issued stablecoins and encouraged banks in the EU to explore tokenized deposits on Friday. This signals a potential shift in the French government's and its central bank's stance on digital currencies.
Lescure expressed support for Qivalis, a group of 12 European banks, including BBVA, ING, UniCredit, and BNP Paribas, which plan 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 encouraging banks to further explore tokenized deposits. He noted that the relatively low volume of euro-pegged stablecoins compared to dollar-pegged ones is "not satisfactory". This marks a departure from the previous strict regulatory stance against privately-issued fiat-pegged cryptocurrencies.
Former Finance Minister Bruno 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.