On Monday 4 May, the European finance ministers took stock of the work in progress in the area of digital finance, which has been regularly addressed by the Eurogroup in its configuration extended to include the EU27 since the start of Kyriakos Pierrakakis’s presidency (see EUROPE 13821/23). This includes support for distributed ledgers (DLT), the use of crypto-assets, in particular stablecoins, and the digital euro project, as these innovations are likely to help strengthen the international role of the single currency (see EUROPE 13824/5).
The ministers were given a progress report on the various technical analyses of the risks to stability posed by the development of digital finance. The threats posed by new artificial intelligence models - such as those developed by the American company Anthropic - which could affect banking cybersecurity as well as other sectors of the economy, were also discussed.
“We need a European response. This will be a key point in the discussion: how, with our tools, including regulatory tools such as the AI Act, we can defend ourselves and enable our companies to access these technologies while protecting us”, declared the Spanish Minister for the Economy, Carlos Cuerpos, on his arrival at the meeting.
The ministers must agree on a joint declaration specifically dedicated to the development of digital finance by the summer. “This will mark the beginning of ongoing monitoring rather than the conclusion of the work”, said a European diplomat ahead of Monday’s meeting. (Original version in French by Bernard Denuit)