ECB President Christine Lagarde used a June 15 speech to frame the digital euro and tokenized central bank settlement as sovereignty infrastructure, not just payment tech. She said international card schemes already process more than 60% of European card payments, 13 of 21 euro area countries lack a national card scheme, and dollar stablecoins are moving into slow, expensive cross-border payments. The ECB is pitching Pontes, Appia, TIPS links, and the digital euro as a way to keep tokenized finance and retail payments anchored to public euro money instead of foreign rails.

TLDR by @Benthic