ECB Official Urges for Creation of European Ledger
An ECB official has proposed the concept of a “European ledger” – a unified platform for digital assets and money across the continent. This could bring greater efficiency and synergy by consolidating these assets in one place.
ECB executive board member Piero Cipollone explained that the current fragmented traditional capital markets in Europe face legislative differences, but there is an opportunity to create a digital capital markets union.
While distributed ledger technology (DLT) is being explored and used by a majority of European banks, Cipollone emphasized that the technology alone is not enough to achieve financial integration.
The lack of interoperability and coordination between different national regulatory regimes has led to isolated pools of asset liquidity, further dividing the market.
Cipollone believes that expanding the use of DLT beyond asset issuance to negotiation, settlement, and custody could reduce costs and enable round-the-clock operations. This would benefit not only investors, but also the stability of central bank money.
