![\"GERMANY-ECB-BANKING-EUROZONE-INFLATION-RATE\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1780588698_256_0x0.jpg\")
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The EU continues to view the use of stablecoins. (Photo by KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV\/AFP via Getty Images) <\/p>\n
AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n
The European Central Bank put two numbers next to each other in its April 2026 Macroprudential Bulletin, and the juxtaposition is the whole story. Euro-denominated stablecoins reached a market capitalization of about \u20ac450 million<\/a> in January 2026, up from \u20ac50 million two years earlier. Dollar-denominated stablecoins, over the same period, sat at roughly $300 billion.<\/p>\n A nine-fold rise off a tiny base is not a threat to anything yet. What it represents is a private euro-token market that is being built, licensed and funded right now, while the public alternative the ECB has worked on since 2021 still waits for a law to pass. By the time the digital euro is ready to issue, the facts on the ground in euro tokens will already have been set by banks and fintechs.<\/p>\n A small market that is being assembled fast<\/p>\n The headline figure understates the momentum, because it captures circulation rather than commitment. The structural change is who is now building euro stablecoins.<\/p>\n For most of MiCA\u2019s life the euro-token space was a handful of niche issuers. Circle\u2019s EURC<\/a> is the largest, issued under a French e-money license. Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 G\u00e9n\u00e9rale\u2019s crypto arm runs EUR CoinVertible and in September 2025 deployed it into DeFi venues<\/a> including Uniswap and Morpho. Those were experiments at the edge of the banking system.<\/p>\n That changed when the incumbents organized. In September 2025 a group of nine European banks, among them ING, UniCredit, CaixaBank and KBC, announced a consortium<\/a> to issue a shared MiCA-compliant euro stablecoin. By December the venture had a name, Qivalis, a Dutch home, an experienced team and a heavyweight addition: BNP Paribas. The company is pursuing a Dutch e-money license<\/a> and targeting a launch in the second half of 2026, with a supervisory board chaired by Sir Howard Davies, the former chair of the UK\u2019s financial regulator. When a coalition of Europe\u2019s largest banks builds a stablecoin company and staffs it with former regulators and central bankers, the product has moved from the fringe to the core.<\/p>\n Usage is following the supply. Monerium, which issues the MiCA-regulated euro token EURe, says it processed over \u20ac6 billion in transaction volume during 2025, a figure that dwarfs the standing circulation number and shows the tokens are being used rather than parked. The ECB\u2019s own count, drawn for its Bulletin, found one major EU bank already issuing a stablecoin and twelve more banks behind the shared consortium, a roster that has widened further since. This is no longer a story about crypto-native startups at the margin. It is the European banking system deciding, institution by institution, that it would rather issue the euro token than cede the format to Circle or to a dollar coin.<\/p>\n MiCA gave euro stablecoins a head start the digital euro never had<\/p>\n The reason private euro tokens can move now is that Europe already wrote their rulebook. MiCA\u2019s provisions for e-money tokens took effect on 30 June 2024<\/a>, and the framework is specific: a single-currency euro stablecoin may only be issued by an authorized credit institution or e-money institution that has filed a white paper. The reserve rules are equally precise. The ECB\u2019s Bulletin spells out that issuers must hold at least 30% of their reserves in credit-institution deposits, rising to 60% for issuers deemed significant, with the remainder in low-risk, highly liquid instruments such as sovereign bonds. Circle became the first global issuer to comply<\/a>, winning a French license that covered both USDC and EURC from the day the rules went live.<\/p>\n That is a working legal regime any qualifying bank can build on today, with the capital and reserve requirements already defined. The digital euro has no equivalent. It is still a legislative proposal, and a contested one.<\/p>\n Brussels has not finished the law<\/p>\n The ECB has done its part of the timetable. On 30 October 2025 the Governing Council moved the project to its next phase<\/a>, concluding the preparation work that began in 2023. But the language in that announcement is conditional in a way that matters. A pilot and initial transactions could take place from mid-2027, the ECB said, and the system could be ready for a first issuance in 2029, under the assumption that European co-legislators adopt the governing regulation during 2026.<\/p>\n