ECB's Schnabel: "Forward guidance during the pandemic narrowed our room for maneuver too much"

ECB Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel warned on February 5 at the ECB Money Market Conference 2026 in Frankfurt that excessive reliance on foreign-currency stablecoins could erode monetary sovereignty and threaten financial stability. She positioned the digital euro, distributed ledger technology and tokenization as Europe's tools for modernizing wholesale financial markets while preserving strategic autonomy. The remarks, part of a speech drawing four lessons from seven years of monetary policy experience, extend her earlier Jackson Hole argument that stablecoins should not displace central bank money. The intervention matters because it signals the ECB favors a publicly backed digital euro over dollar-denominated private tokens in European payments and settlement. Watch for further ECB detail on the digital euro's wholesale use cases and legislative progress on the framework.