Euroclear is working with Banque de France on a €300 billion tokenization initiative that could reshape how European financial assets are settled. Jørgen Ouaknine, an executive at the Brussels-based post-trade giant, disclosed the project's scope during recent discussions with the French central bank.
Why the project matters
The push aims to settle transactions faster and tie together Europe's fragmented digital finance infrastructure. Tokenization — converting real-world assets into digital tokens on a shared ledger — lets market players move securities and cash almost instantly, cutting the hours or days that settlement now takes.
The €300 billion figure gives a sense of scale. That's the volume of assets the partners intend to eventually process through the tokenized system. For context, Euroclear settles more than €900 trillion in securities annually, but the project zeroes in on a specific, high-value slice of that flow.
What the partnership involves
Banque de France's role goes beyond passive oversight. The central bank has been experimenting with wholesale central bank digital currency, and its participation in this project suggests that tokenized settlement could run on a CBDC-backed network. That would let commercial banks and market infrastructures use digital euros to pay for tokenized securities in real time — a step change from the current batch-processing model.
Ouaknine framed the effort as a way to “enhance settlement efficiency” and “foster digital infrastructure integration,” according to his remarks. He didn't give a launch date or spell out which assets would be tokenized first. The work is still in the exploratory phase, with technical trials and regulatory discussions underway.
Who else is involved
The facts don't name other participants, but such a large initiative typically involves multiple banks, trading platforms, and tech providers. Euroclear and Banque de France are the named anchors, so the next steps will likely include bringing in private-sector partners to test the system in live market conditions.
No timeline has been announced. The partners haven't said when they expect a pilot or a full rollout. For now, the project remains a high-level blueprint — one that will require clearing legal, operational, and cross-border hurdles before it touches actual trades.
Regulators across Europe are watching. The European Central Bank has its own digital euro work in progress, and the Banque de France effort could feed into that. If the tokenization model proves out, it might set a template for other central banks and clearinghouses looking to modernise their own systems.
