French finance minister backs euro-pegged stablecoins to compete with US

Roland Lescure, France’s finance minister, backed an initiative by European banks to launch a euro-pegged stablecoin in 2026 to compete with US dollar-backed tokens, which currently dominate the market.

According to a Friday Reuters report, Lescure supported the euro-pegged Qivalis stablecoin plan launched in September 2025 by EU banks, including Dutch lender ING and Italy’s UniCredit.

The goal of the banks was to create a stablecoin in compliance with the EU’s Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulatory framework; the MiCA-compliant euro stablecoin is expected to be launched in the second half of 2026.

“That is ‌what ⁠we need, and that is what we want,” said Lescure, according to Reuters. “I also strongly encourage banks to further explore the launch of tokenized deposits.”

EU banks are collaborating to create an alternative to the US-dominated stablecoin market, led by Tether’s USDt (USDT) and Circle’s USDC (USDC). As of Friday, USDT had a market capitalization of about $186 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.

Related: SocGen brings MiCA-compliant USDCV dollar stablecoin to MetaMask

Lescure, who reportedly made the comments in a pre-recorded message, said the relatively small volume of euro-pegged stablecoins compared to dollar-pegged ​ones was “not satisfactory.”

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in January, Banque de France Governor François Villeroy de Galhau said that tokenization and stablecoins were likely to be “the name of the game” in 2026, highlighting benefits of blockchain infrastructure for finance.

However, he opposed interest-bearing stablecoins, claiming that they could destabilize financial systems, a criticism shared by several EU and US policy makers, as well as central bank officials, as stablecoin yield continues to be a contentious regulatory topic.