The Europeans want to impose a vto the Libra, the digital currency of

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WASHINGTON (awp / afp) – France, Italy and Germany are working together on a series of measures to ban Facebook's future cryptocurrency, Bruno Le Maire, the French Minister of Economy, announced on Friday. many threats that the Libra poses to the states.

"In the coming weeks, with Olaf Scholz and Roberto Gualtieri, my German and Italian counterparts, we will take a number of initiatives to make it clear that Libra is not welcome in Europe because it is our sovereignty. which is at stake, "he told a press conference on the sidelines of the IMF and World Bank meetings in Washington.

"We will not accept that a private multinational company has the same power, the same monetary power as the sovereign states that are subject to democratic control, because the big difference between Facebook and the States is that we are subject to democratic control, that is to say the control of the people, "he added.

The G7, the Group of Seven most industrialized countries (Germany, Canada, United States, France, Great Britain, Italy and Japan), meeting in Washington on Thursday, had already agreed that the prerequisite for launching stable cryptocurrencies, like Libra, was the establishment of a legal framework.

For their part, the G20 finance ministers on Friday called for "assessing" the risks posed by stable digital currencies, ie backed by a basket of currencies such as the euro or the dollar, and "y" remedy "before they are launched.

"While we recognize the potential benefits of innovation in the financial sector, we agree that stable digital currencies (…) present a series of significant policy and regulatory risks", said in a statement the Japanese presidency of the G20, citing in particular money laundering, illegal financing or undermining the protection of consumers and investors.

The G20 also asked the IMF to examine the macroeconomic implications "including issues of monetary sovereignty of member states taking into account the characteristics of countries".

But Europeans seem to want to go further by simply banning Facebook's currency.

Olaf Scholz followed suit with his French counterpart, stressing that he was "very skeptical" about the Libra.

"I am in favor of not allowing the introduction of such a world currency, because it is the task of democratic states," he said.

He also agrees that it is "necessary to reform" the banking and banking sector to make cross-border international payments easier, faster and cheaper, "but at the same time, it is necessary to preserve the autonomy democratic states, "he continued.

"Legitimate questions"

The Italian Finance Minister was not immediately available to comment on this information.

"I repeat, our priority today is to work with regulators to answer their legitimate questions and give them all the necessary guarantees," responded Bertrand Perez, the director general of the Libra Association.

"The Libra project was created to complement the existing system and not to replace sovereign currencies," the Association said in a statement.

Bruno Le Maire seemed to dismiss the idea of ​​working hand in hand with Facebook.

He recalled one of the particularly contentious points: the fact that the Libra will be backed by a basket of currencies.

"It will be enough if Facebook decides to have more euros or more dollars to have an impact on the exchange rate of the euro or the dollar and therefore a direct impact on the trade, the industry, the states that have the reference currency is the euro or the dollar ".

This will affect the efficiency of states and weaken the independence of monetary policy, he said.

"Do we want monetary policy to be in the hands of a private company like Facebook?" My answer is clearly no, "he concluded.

Bruno Le Maire, however, stressed that he was not against the establishment of a public digital currency, on which France is willing to work "in a European framework".

"The right answer is not a private digital currency under the leadership of one of the largest multinationals in the world, which has 2.4 billion customers," he continued.

The Libra association was officially launched on Monday by 21 founding members in Geneva including PayU, telecom groups Vodafone and Iliad, platforms Uber and Spotify, blockchain actors like Anchorage or Coinbase, venture capital funds like Andreessen Horowitz or non-profit organizations like Kiva.

However, the project was recently weakened by the defection of Paypal, Visa, Mastercard or eBay.

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