Until very recently, France’s official position on privately issued stablecoins was that they were a threat to national sovereignty and had no place in Europe. That position changed publicly on April 17, 2026, when French Finance Minister Roland Lescure stood at a crypto conference in Paris and said the opposite.
Lescure called for more euro-denominated stablecoins and urged EU banks to explore tokenised deposits, marking a notable policy shift in Paris. He expressed support for Qivalis, a consortium of 12 European banks planning to launch a euro-pegged stablecoin in the second half of 2026 to counter US dominance in digital payments. “That is what we need and that is what we want,” Lescure said.
The statement is remarkable because of what came before it. Former Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire had declared that private stablecoins had “no place on European soil,” framing them as threats to monetary sovereignty. In 2023, Le Maire was linked to a EU document revealing the European Commission’s plan to halt stablecoins from becoming widely used in place of fiat currency. France went from trying to kill the stablecoin market to backing a 12-bank consortium to build one. That is not a small shift.
Why France Changed Its Mind
The answer is the dollar. Dollar-pegged stablecoins like USDT and USDC together represent over $300 billion in circulation. Euro stablecoin volumes are just 0.2% of on-chain transactions. Every time a European business settles a crypto payment, makes a DeFi trade, or processes a cross-border transfer using stablecoins, it is almost certainly doing so in dollars. That bothers European policymakers for the same reason it has always bothered them: it makes Europe’s financial infrastructure dependent on American currency rails.
The concern is no longer theoretical. Stablecoins are increasingly being used for real commerce, not just crypto trading. With the US pushing aggressively under the GENIUS Act to establish USDC and USDT as global payment standards, Europe faces a choice: build competing euro-denominated alternatives or watch its digital payment infrastructure default permanently to the dollar.
Lescure said the current volume of euro-pegged stablecoins versus dollar tokens is “not satisfactory” and warned that Europe cannot leave its digital payment rails to foreign currencies.
What Qivalis Is Building
Qivalis is a 12-bank alliance including ING, UniCredit, BBVA and BNP Paribas, targeting a MiCA-compliant euro stablecoin launch in the second half of 2026.
The CEO is Jan-Oliver Sell, former head of Coinbase’s German operations. The supervisory board chair is Sir Howard Davies, previously Deputy Governor of the Bank of England. The token will be pegged 1:1 to the euro, with reserves composed of at least 40% bank deposits and the remainder in short-term European government securities.
The consortium is not building a startup. It is building bank-issued digital money backed by twelve of Europe’s largest financial institutions, operating under the EU’s MiCA regulatory framework. The stated goal is to become the default euro token on regulated exchanges, institutional custodians, and DeFi platforms, a direct challenge to USDT and USDC’s dominance.
Qivalis has already launched advanced negotiations with exchanges, market makers, and liquidity providers to ensure operational listings from day one.
Why This Is an Ethereum Story
Euro stablecoins matter for Ethereum because Ethereum is where stablecoins live. The majority of USDC and USDT circulates on Ethereum and its Layer 2 networks. Tether’s USDT on Ethereum alone accounts for tens of billions in daily settlement volume. If a euro-denominated stablecoin achieves meaningful scale, it will almost certainly be deployed on Ethereum first, because that is where the liquidity, the DeFi protocols, and the institutional infrastructure already exist.
A successful euro stablecoin running on Ethereum would increase transaction volume on the network, add to fee revenue, and broaden the network’s role beyond dollar settlement into multi-currency global commerce. It would also give European institutions a reason to build directly on Ethereum rather than waiting for the European Central Bank’s digital euro, which has faced political resistance and slow progress through the European Parliament.
What Still Stands in the Way
Research from RBC Capital Markets shows that about two-thirds of European banks report limited demand for stablecoins, reflecting ongoing uncertainty around regulation and market fit.
That is a significant headwind. Lescure can call for euro stablecoins from a conference stage, but if European businesses and consumers are not asking for them, supply alone will not create adoption. The demand side needs to develop alongside the supply side, and that will require use cases beyond crypto trading: payroll, invoicing, cross-border settlement between European companies, and integration with existing payment rails like SEPA.
Bank of France Governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau recently warned that stablecoins and tokenised private money could accelerate what he framed as a political threat: “The first threat is privatisation of money, and loss of monetary sovereignty.” Lescure is now arguing the opposite: that European sovereignty is threatened more by doing nothing than by doing something. The tension between the Finance Minister and the central bank governor on this issue suggests the political debate within France is far from settled.
What is settled is that France has publicly reversed its position. A finance minister of the eurozone’s second-largest economy has endorsed bank-issued stablecoins, backed a specific consortium to build one, and called the current state of euro-denominated digital money “not satisfactory.” For the stablecoin market and for Ethereum as the primary infrastructure layer, that is a shift worth watching closely as Qivalis moves toward its H2 2026 launch.
