Posted by Colin Lambert. Last updated: February 23, 2026
European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde says that efforts to facilitate the use of distributed ledger technology infrastructure for the EU-wide settlement of assets are aimed at ensuring that the euro’s role is futureproof at a time when stablecoins and tokenised assets are rapidly gaining ground.
“I want the euro to be fit for the future,” she told the Wall Street Journal in an interview outlining her legacy.
The interview comes after the launch of Eurosystem’s strategy for a competitive and integrated tokenised financial ecosystem in Europe, dubbed Pontes and Appia, was introduced in November. Under the two-pronged strategy,
Appia focuses on building an innovative, integrated and sustainable ecosystem for wholesale financial markets, including payments, covering the entire value chain across Europe. Pontes, meanwhile, supplements Appia by allowing DLT-based transaction settlement in central bank money by 2026.
The rationale behind the strategy is to increase market efficiency and integration by furthering a digital savings and investment union in Europe. To address the risks of fragmentation in financial markets due to uncoordinated development of DLT platforms, Pontes and Appia will shape the process.
Lagarde told the WSJ said that the strategy will allow the ECB to process and settle tokenised deposits and assets using DLT platforms as it waits for the European Parliament’s vote on the approval of the digital euro as a central bank digital currency. “The Commission is prepared, the Council is prepared, so we’re waiting for the third branch to say “OK, this is what we want, these are the thresholds, the limits,” she told the WSJ. “That is hopefully a legacy that I will also leave behind.”