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French Finance Minister Roland Lescure has said that Europe needs more euro-pegged stablecoins and urged European Union banks to explore tokenized deposits to counter the United States’ dominance in digital payments.
- French minister calls for more euro-pegged stablecoins
- Spread of stablecoins as a settlement
- Tokenized deposit and CBDC aim to counter U.S. hostility
In a pre-recorded speech at a digital asset conference in Paris on Friday, Lescure said the relatively small volume of euro-pegged stablecoins compared to U.S. dollar-pegged tokens was “not satisfactory,” as reported by Reuters on April 17.
The seemingly unstoppable rise of stablecoins saw the sector reach a total market cap of over $300 billion in December 2025, with some predicting it could hit the trillions by 2028. At the same time, on-chain activity exceeded $1 trillion in monthly transaction volume multiple times in 2025, with stablecoins processing $28 trillion in real economic volume throughout the year.
Yet, according to a June 2022 report from the Atlantic Council, 98% of stablecoins are pegged to the U.S. dollar, despite over 80% of stablecoin transactions occurring outside the United States.
This exponential growth, combined with the dominance of the U.S. dollar as the fiat of choice for stablecoin denominations and backing, has sparked legitimate fears among political and financial leaders outside the U.S. that dollar dominance in the sector is approaching a point of no return.
In a recent speech, published by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) on April 9, Denis Beau, First Deputy Governor of the Bank of France (BoF), warned that the spread of stablecoins as settlement assets could lead to the “stablecoinization” and “dollarization” of a significant part of the EU’s payment system, if the sector is not appropriately controlled.
To meet this challenge, nine major European banks, including ING (NASDAQ: ING), Danske Bank (NASDAQ: DNSKF), UniCredit, and CaixaBank (NASDAQ: CIXPF), joined forces in September 2025 to launch a euro-denominated stablecoin. The planned stablecoin will be compliant with the EU’s Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation (MiCAR) and “aims to become a trusted European payment standard in the digital ecosystem,” according to the announcing press release.
On Friday, in reference to the initiative, Lescure told the Paris conference that “that is what we need and that is what we want,” adding that “I also strongly encourage banks to further explore the launch of tokenised deposits.”
In terms of this latter point, European finance chiefs and policymakers have been increasingly exploring ways to reduce reliance on U.S. payment providers—in the face of a U.S. President that is openly hostile to the EU.
Tokenized deposit and CBDC to combat US hostility
In 2018, during his first term as President, Donald Trump described the EU as a “foe” on trade. Since then, his seeming enmity for Europe has only grown to the point where a recent survey found that half of Europeans now see Trump as an enemy of Europe.
Most recently, in the light of the U.S. and Israel’s war on Iran and a perceived lack of support for said war from European allies, Trump hinted that he may pull the U.S. out of the NATO defense pact, saying the controversial move was now “beyond reconsideration.”
In this fractious environment, it has increasingly become clear to European leaders—and, for that matter, much of the world—that it can no longer rely on the U.S. as an ally, whether in trade, finance, or defense.
Politicians in the EU say that if European banks adopt tokenized deposits, they could reduce reliance on U.S. payment providers—such as Visa (NASDAQ: V) and Mastercard (NASDAQ: MA)—by enabling instant, programmable, and cross-border payments within the European infrastructure. The hope is that it would also lead to a strengthening of monetary sovereignty, lower intermediary costs, improved settlement efficiency, and keep transaction data and control within EU-regulated systems.
Another route European policymakers are exploring to reduce U.S. monetary dominance and reliance on non-EU payment providers is the European Central Bank’s (ECB’s) long-anticipated digital euro, a central bank digital currency (CBDC).
The digital euro has been in the works since 2021, when the ECB launched an investigation into a Eurozone CBDC to be used by citizens and businesses for retail payments. The ECB then began developing and testing the proposed CBDC.
The ECB executive board member Piero Cipollone revealed last September that the central bank had settled on 2029 as a realistic timeline for establishing the digital euro, in the form of an online payment wallet backed by the central bank, with the only remaining barrier seemingly being legislative hesitance and delay.
In a speech this March to the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, Cipollone again reaffirmed to EU lawmakers the “vital importance” of advancing the digital euro initiative, to “strengthening EU monetary sovereignty, reduce fragmentation in retail payments and supporting the integrity and resilience of the Single Market.”
Many EU lawmakers are already on the side of the planned CBDC, not least France’s finance minister, Lescure, who on Friday reportedly backed the digital euro plan, calling it “the right balance.”
Watch: Finding ways to use CBDC outside of digital currencies
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