Banque de France Official Expects First NEU CP Issues in December 2026

Denis Beau, first deputy governor of the Banque de France, expects the first tokenized issues of Negotiable European Commercial Paper (NEU CP) in December 2026, using a Eurosystem service to settle them in central bank money.

Beau outlined the timeline at the South African Reserve Bank’s Payments Conference in Pretoria on Oct. 21. Pythagore, a joint Banque de France and Euroclear France project, plans to issue NEU CP on Euroclear France’s D-FMI+ distributed ledger technology (DLT) infrastructure and settle it through Pontes.

The Eurosystem launched Pontes on Sept. 21, 2026, for wholesale settlement of tokenized assets in central bank money. Beau said its operating hours are intended to expand toward 24/7, with additional functions planned by 2028.

Beau described Pythagore as part of an effort to extend Europe’s two-tier monetary system to tokenized markets. In that model, central bank money anchors wholesale settlement alongside tokenized commercial bank money and stablecoins issued by regulated European institutions. Beau argued that euro-denominated settlement assets matter for Europe’s monetary autonomy because stablecoins are overwhelmingly denominated in U.S. dollars.

He described Pontes as the wholesale settlement service and the proposed digital euro as the retail-side initiative. The Eurosystem’s Appia project is exploring infrastructure, interoperability and liquidity arrangements for tokenized markets; its blueprint is expected in 2028.