Isabel Schnabel: Central banks on-chain
ECB explores the future of central bank money in tokenised markets: In a speech at Jackson Hole, ECB Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel highlighted the potential of tokenisation to improve the efficiency and integration of financial markets. She stressed that central bank money should play a central role in the emerging DLT ecosystem and outlined the Eurosystem's ongoing work through Projects Appia and Pontes.
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ECB speech: digital euro, tokenisation and the role of central banks
In a speech delivered on 6 October 2026, ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone set out the ECB's strategy for extending central bank money into the digital environment while preserving the two-tier monetary system. The strategy combines the retail digital euro with the wholesale initiatives Pontes, for settling tokenised transactions, and Appia, for shaping the wider digital finance ecosystem. He highlighted Europe's reliance on international card schemes, which account for two-thirds of euro area card payments, and the absence of a domestic card scheme in 13 of the 21 euro area countries.
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ECB's Lane Sets Out Diagnostic Challenges for Monetary Policy
In a keynote speech at the ECB Conference on Monetary Policy 2026 in Frankfurt on 5 October 2026, ECB Executive Board member Philip R. Lane detailed the diagnostic challenges the Governing Council faces in calibrating monetary policy. He explained how the three established criteria — the inflation outlook, underlying inflation dynamics and the strength of monetary transmission — are applied in a context where an energy supply shock is the main inflation driver. The speech outlines the role of scenarios, sensitivity analyses and a broad battery of underlying inflation measures, but announces no new policy decisions or regulatory requirements.
05 Oct 2026