On Mar. 10, 2025, European Stability Mechanism managing director Pierre Gramegna expressed his concerns regarding the potential harm of the U.S. government’s pro-crypto course and USD-denominated stablecoins to the EU’sEU’s financial stability and sovereignty.
Gramegna’s recent commentaries concerning the U.S. crypto policy’s potential impact on the eurozone economy are associated with Facebook’s Libra/Diem story. Facebook failed to launch its crypto due to legal disputes and an overall cautious approach to cryptos from governmental institutions.
During the Eurogroup press conference, Gramegna said that the tech giants may try to launch their cryptocurrencies like Facebook tried to do in 2019–2022. Given that the current administration is boldly pro-crypto, associating championing cryptocurrencies with global leadership, new efforts similar to Libra/Diem may occur.
The Reuters quotes Gramegna saying the following:
The U.S. administration’s stance on this compared to the past has changed: the U.S. administration is favorable towards cryptocurrencies and especially dollar-denominated stablecoins, which may raise certain concerns in Europe that it could reignite foreign and U.S. tech giants ‘ plans to launch mass payment solutions based on dollar-denominated stablecoins.
Is the threat real?
The payment system launched by messengers or social media platforms with multi-million or even multi-billion audiences may seriously impact the EU’s financial stability and even sovereignty, according to Gramegna.
As of November 2024, on average, Facebook was used by 260 million users every day. As of March 2025, the EU population reaches over 744 million people. It means that nearly 35% of the EU population uses Facebook on any given day. There are even more Instagram daily users in Europe.
No wonder the idea of giving these people an instrument for instant cross-border payments by a company registered in the U.S. may look destabilizing. Suppose many Europeans find it convenient to pay using social media platforms and messengers instead of bank cards. In that case, the new payment systems may draw a substantial share of liquidity away from euros and redirect it into the U.S. economy. More than that, any tech giant-issued payment system may have serious centralization concerns, creating a potential threat in terms of technical security.
Do such projects (if they occur) pose an existential challenge to the eurozone? Theoretically, this is so, but in practice, European countries may block such payment systems from being deployed in their jurisdictions as they already did when Facebook was trying to launch Libra.
The rhetoric of 2019 was quite the same. European officials said they need to block Facebook’s Libra in their countries in order to protect financial sovereignty. BBC cites then-minister of finance of France Bruno Le Maire saying that Libra ” represents a systemic risk from the moment when you have two billion users”. He warned that potential breakdowns in the functioning of the Libra system or reserve management troubles could lead to severe fallout. He concluded: “Concerns about Libra are serious. I therefore want to say with plenty of clarity: in these conditions, we cannot authorize the development of Libra on European soil.”
The U.S. may support the “next Libra”, but will it manage to shove it through the legal barriers of the EU protectionists? Even if the EU blocks such initiatives successfully, the implementation of such payment systems in other regions potentially widens the opportunity corridor for the U.S. influence while narrowing it for its competitors, including Europe.
Potential solution
The main and probably the only solid solution that is posed as an alternative to popular American stablecoins is the European CBDCs. The European Central Bank has been working on the digital euro project since 2020. Gramegna clearly associates European autonomy with the introduction of the EU CBDC, and in his speech, he called the work on the digital Euro urgent. He said, “Digital Euro is more necessary today than ever.”
Gramegna even said that it is possible to “relook at the MiCA directive, which could prove key here to counter some of the effects that we have discussed.” In Europe, CBDCs are supposed to replace systems like Visa and PayPal, moving away from the U.S. influence.
Europe could have responded by supporting euro-denominated stablecoins, but the current statistics for such an initiative are far from promising. Tether’sTether’s USDT and Coinbase’sCoinbase’s USDC are already dominating stablecoins. In contrast, stablecoins pegged to the Euro are so far behind in terms of market cap and demand that we can hardly call them competitors. According to Coinmarketcap, the first 11 biggest stablecoins (in terms of the market cap) are pegged to the U.S. dollar. The 12th biggest stablecoin is Stasis Euro, pegged to Euro. Market cap-wise, it is the 258th biggest cryptocurrency. EURC, Tether Euro, and Euro Vertible are the only other Euro-pegged stablecoins in the list of the top 30 stablecoins with the biggest market cap. The USD-denominated coins overwhelmingly dominate the list.
It doesn’t mean Europe cannot leverage Euro-pegged stablecoins, but it means that the starting point is far from being favorable. The situation with the digital Euro is pretty opposite. As the U.S. banned the development of CBDCs, Europe may break ahead as the leader of the free world in using CBDCs.
