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Europe’s tokenised capital-market push is moving from pilot language toward infrastructure planning. In a March 23 speech in Brussels, published by the BIS on March 25, ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone said Europe now needs to solve two scale problems in tokenised finance: fragmented DLT platforms and the lack of a common, trusted onchain settlement asset. His answer is a two-track Eurosystem strategy built around Pontes, a near-term bridge to settle tokenised transactions in central bank money, and Appia, a longer-term blueprint for Europe’s future tokenised financial ecosystem.
The speech matters because it goes further than general support for tokenisation. Cipollone argues that tokenised central bank money is becoming the settlement anchor Europe needs if it wants tokenised securities markets to scale without relying too heavily on private settlement assets such as tokenised deposits or stablecoins. At the same time, he makes clear that infrastructure alone will not be enough: Europe also needs legal harmonisation and deep market participation if it wants tokenised capital markets to move beyond isolated projects.
Europe’s tokenised market has momentum, but not yet scale
Cipollone says tokenised capital markets in Europe have already moved from exploration to production. He cites AFME estimates showing that European issuers have placed close to €4 billion in fixed-income instruments on DLT since 2021, including digital sovereign debt issuance by EU member states. He also points to the Eurosystem’s 2024 exploratory work, where participants across nine jurisdictions carried out around €1.6 billion in transactions, including some settled in central bank money.
But the ECB’s view is that early issuance is not the same as real market scale. In the speech, Cipollone says Europe still faces two core obstacles: DLT platforms remain fragmented and assets are not easily transferable across them, while tokenised markets also lack a common onchain settlement asset trusted across the system. Without that settlement layer, he argues, sellers of tokenised securities may be paid in assets they do not want to hold because of volatility or credit risk.
Pontes is the near-term answer
The most immediate operational takeaway from the speech is Pontes. Cipollone says Pontes will launch in the third quarter of 2026 and will bridge market DLT platforms with the Eurosystem’s existing TARGET Services, allowing tokenised asset transactions to settle in central bank money. The separate Appia roadmap published by the ECB earlier in March is even more specific, saying Pontes should be available as early as end-Q3 2026.
That makes Pontes a practical near-term infrastructure project, not just a concept paper. In the ECB’s framing, it is meant to give the market a safe settlement anchor now, while broader work on the long-term architecture continues. Cipollone also says Pontes will be enhanced over time with features such as settlement finality on Eurosystem DLT, 24/7 operation, smart-contract functionality and other upgrades shaped by Appia’s analysis and market feedback.
Appia is the longer game
If Pontes is the bridge, Appia is the design exercise for the full system. Cipollone says Appia will provide the long-term blueprint for a European tokenised financial ecosystem, while the ECB’s roadmap says the blueprint is expected by 2028. The project is structured around six building blocks covering areas from technical standards and interoperability to collateral management, cross-border connectivity and legal and regulatory foundations.
A central design question inside Appia is whether Europe should build around one shared European ledger or around multiple interoperable networks. Cipollone says both models, or a hybrid of them, will be assessed against Eurosystem objectives under different technological, market, regulatory and geopolitical conditions. That is important because the ECB is not yet committing to one final architecture. It is treating the structure of the future network itself as one of the core open questions.
The ECB wants central bank money onchain before private rails dominate
The speech is unusually direct on settlement hierarchy. Cipollone says private settlement assets such as tokenised deposits and stablecoins will have a role in tokenised finance, just as commercial bank money does in traditional finance, but they still need a trusted public anchor to work effectively across the market. He argues that tokenised central bank money would allow private settlement assets to interoperate more safely, including transfers between tokenised deposits at different banks or stablecoin settlement into fiat directly on DLT.
He is also explicit about the stablecoin risk. Cipollone cites research saying even fiat-backed stablecoins rarely trade exactly at par, even in calm conditions, and warns that a single dominant platform or stablecoin with strong network effects could create serious consequences for Europe’s monetary sovereignty. This is one of the clearest signals in the speech: the ECB does not want Europe’s tokenised-market core to rest only on private money.
Public-private coordination is not optional
Cipollone’s second major condition for scale is a real public-private partnership. He says the Eurosystem’s role is to ensure the availability of the safest settlement asset, but the services, liquidity and business models that make tokenised markets useful must come from the market itself. That is why he repeatedly frames both the 2024 exploratory work and Appia as joint efforts rather than central-bank-only projects.
The speech gives some concrete detail here. Cipollone says the Eurosystem’s 2024 exploratory work involved 64 industry participants and that their operational feedback directly shaped Pontes. He also says the ECB published the Appia roadmap as an open invitation for market participants, public-sector actors and academia to contribute, and he explicitly welcomes private-sector interoperability initiatives such as the white paper published by Euroclear, Clearstream and DTCC.
Legal fragmentation may be the hardest bottleneck
The third condition in the speech is legal reform, and this may be the most important part for anyone expecting technology alone to solve Europe’s capital-markets fragmentation. Cipollone says DLT cannot harmonise corporate law across 27 member states, reconcile diverging securities rules or override national insolvency regimes that still treat the same asset differently depending on where it is held. In other words, tokenised infrastructure can improve post-trade efficiency, but it cannot by itself build a single European capital market.
That is why he pushes beyond existing EU frameworks. Cipollone praises MiCA and the DLT Pilot Regime as early regulatory foundations and welcomes the European Commission’s proposals to extend and enhance the DLT Pilot Regime as well as the proposed 28th regime for corporate law. But he also asks whether that will be enough, or whether Europe will need a dedicated EU legal framework allowing tokenised assets to be issued, held and transferred seamlessly across the Union.
The collateral move shows this is already entering monetary operations
The broader shift is not limited to speeches. Cipollone says the Eurosystem’s decision to accept DLT-based assets as eligible collateral for credit operations, starting in March 2026 with assets issued in central securities depositories, came in response to clear market demand. The ECB’s January 27 press release confirms that DLT-based marketable assets issued in CSDs became eligible as Eurosystem collateral from March 30, 2026, while further work continues on expanding eligibility to assets issued and settled entirely on DLT networks.
That point matters because it shows tokenisation is already touching core central-bank infrastructure, not just pilot sandboxes. The ECB is gradually adjusting its collateral framework to technological change while trying to preserve safety, efficiency and a level playing field. That gives the speech more weight: it sits on top of real operational decisions, not only conceptual ambitions.
What this still doesn’t settle
For all its ambition, the speech is still a speech, not a full legal or technical rulebook. It does not say whether Europe will ultimately choose a single ledger or interoperable networks, how tokenised central bank money will be technically implemented at scale, or whether lawmakers will actually deliver the level of legal harmonisation Cipollone says is needed. It also does not set a final end-state for Pontes beyond its bridge role, even though Cipollone says Pontes and Appia form one strategy and that Pontes should eventually evolve into a core part of the Appia ecosystem.
Why it matters for crypto
- It shows the ECB is no longer treating tokenised finance as a distant experiment. It is now openly planning near-term settlement infrastructure and a longer-term architecture for Europe’s digital asset market.
- The speech reinforces a core policy divide: tokenised deposits and stablecoins may have a role, but the ECB wants tokenised central bank money to remain the settlement anchor of the system.
- It raises the strategic stakes for stablecoins in Europe, because Cipollone explicitly frames dominant private settlement assets as a potential challenge to monetary sovereignty.
- It also signals that real tokenised-market scale in Europe will depend as much on legal harmonisation and interoperability standards as on blockchain technology itself.
What to watch next
- Whether Pontes launches on schedule in Q3 2026 and how much real market usage it attracts once central bank money settlement becomes available for tokenised transactions.
- How much market feedback the ECB receives on Appia, and whether that pushes the Eurosystem toward a shared ledger, multiple interoperable networks, or a hybrid model.
- Whether Europe’s lawmakers go beyond MiCA and the DLT Pilot Regime and move toward the dedicated legal framework Cipollone says may be necessary for seamless EU-wide tokenised assets.
- Whether the collateral framework expands further from DLT assets issued in CSDs to assets issued and settled entirely on DLT networks.