The Banque de France and Euroclear have launched Project Pythagore have launched Project Pythagore to tokenize the negotiable EU (NEU) commercial paper sector, which has an outstanding balance of €310 billion. They aim to go live in late 2026 when France’s pilot wholesale CBDC becomes available as part of the European Central Bank’s Project Pontes for wholesale DLT settlement. The initiative has historical context: a previous French initiative using DLT for commercial paper moved beyond the trial phase, but failed to take off. As we’ll explore, several factors contributed to its failure that are unlikely to impact Pythagore.
Euroclear and the Banque de France have worked together on multiple occasions involving DLT. They last collaborated in November 2024, when Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations (CDC) issued a €100m ($108m) digital bond settled using the Banque de France’s wholesale CBDC. CDC used Euroclear’s D-FMI tokenization platform for the issuance as part of the Eurosystem DLT settlement trials. Euroclear also conducted a proof of concept with the central bank back in 2021.
“The NEU CP market is the largest and already the most transparent short-term debt market in the euro area,” said Emmanuelle Assouan – Director General for Financial Stability and Operations at Banque de France. “Banque de France is mobilized to further strengthen its attractiveness at European level alongside issuers, investors and financial intermediaries, particularly with a view to creating a saving and investment Union.”
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