Digital euro may launch on Ethereum or Solana as Brussels scrambles for sovereignty

The European Union is accelerating work on a digital euro and is weighing public blockchains, including Ethereum and Solana, for issuance and settlement, per the Financial Times.

The move follows passage of U.S. stablecoin legislation and a market dominated by dollar-pegged tokens, a backdrop that raises concerns inside European institutions about the euro’s role in digital payments.

The European Central Bank detailed steady preparation in its third progress update, including rulebook drafting, user research, and an innovation platform with around 70 market participants, as disclosed in its July 16 press release and accompanying report.

The ECB’s public timeline states the preparation phase runs to October 2025, after which the Governing Council will decide on the next steps, while issuance would still require EU legislation, per the central bank’s project page.

Strategic autonomy has been the core policy driver. In April, Executive Board member Piero Cipollone told the European Parliament’s ECON committee that a digital euro would reduce structural dependence on non-EU payment rails and support a resilient retail payments baseline for the bloc, as recorded in the ECB’s introductory statement and related BIS posting.

Those remarks frame the urgency of a legislative path and the policy objective of anchoring day-to-day payments in central bank money in both online and offline settings.

The regulatory perimeter is already in place. The EU’s Markets in Crypto-assets Regulation, Regulation 2023/1114, entered into force in June 2023.

Stablecoin provisions covering e-money tokens and asset-referenced tokens have been in effect since June 30, 2024, and the broader framework for crypto-asset service providers has been in effect since December 30, 2024, per ESMA, the Commission’s delegated-acts portal summary, and the Official Journal entry.

This staged regime gives EU authorities a harmonized platform to supervise euro-denominated tokens and service providers…