European Central Bank's Lane highlights digital euro and DLT settlement plans and urges faster completion of the savings and investments union and banking union

In remarks at the conferral of the 2025 Pádraig Ó hUiginn Award, European Central Bank Executive Board member Philip R. Lane set out priorities for balancing strong regulation with innovation as the financial system digitalises, while stressing the need to accelerate European financial integration. Lane argued that prudential regulation and supervision are essential to maintaining standards, protecting consumers and supporting financial stability, but should not deter new entrants or inhibit innovation. On digitalisation, he pointed to the ECB’s work on a digital euro as a way to modernise central bank money and preserve the principle that commercial bank money remains interchangeable at par with central bank money. He also referenced the ECB-approved plan to enable distributed ledger technology transactions to be settled in central bank money using a dual-track approach, with the “Pontes” track offering a short-term market solution including a pilot phase and “Appia” exploring a potential long-term solution. On integration, he called for substantial progress on integrating Europe’s financial system, including completing the savings and investments union and the banking union to an ambitious timetable, citing benefits such as improved market efficiency, better access to equity and debt financing, lower transaction costs, and greater capacity to fund the green transition and the scaling up of the European defence industry.