The European Central Bank has laid out a new plan to connect Europe’s fragmented tokenized capital markets. The Eurosystem said it will roll out Pontes, a settlement anchor designed for distributed ledger technology platforms, while the broader Appia roadmap is meant to shape a unified European digital asset ecosystem.
Speaking at the House of the Euro in Brussels on March 23, 2026, ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone said digital markets are moving out of the experimental stage and into production. Since 2021, European issuers have placed nearly €4 billion in DLT-based instruments, according to his remarks. He said the Eurosystem is now building the infrastructure needed to bridge separate platforms and provide a secure public settlement anchor.
Pontes is built for central bank money settlement on DLT
The Pontes solution is scheduled to launch in the third quarter of 2026. Its purpose is to enable settlement in central bank money across DLT platforms. That work sits inside the wider Appia roadmap, which aims to deliver a full blueprint for a European tokenized financial ecosystem by 2028. Recent trials involved 64 participants across nine jurisdictions and processed about €1.6 billion in transactions to test interoperability arrangements.
Those trials show the ECB is concentrating on settlement design and cross-platform connectivity rather than theory alone. The issue is practical: tokenized assets can be issued on separate systems, but settlement and transfer become much harder when market infrastructure remains split. Pontes is meant to address that gap.
DLT-based assets to become eligible collateral
The ECB also said that, starting in March 2026, it will accept DLT-based assets as eligible collateral for credit operations. That places tokenized instruments inside a live central bank framework for liquidity operations and risk management. It is a concrete policy step, not only a technical test.
Cipollone called for a real public-private partnership and for legal rules that match Europe’s technological ambitions. His warning was directed at regulatory fragmentation across the continent. In his words, Europe was able to build a single currency, and it can also build a single digital financial market alongside it.
MiCA remains the current legal base
The material also identifies MiCA, the Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, as the current continent-wide legal foundation for European digital assets. Within that structure, the ECB’s plan brings issuance, settlement, collateral eligibility, and public infrastructure into one policy track. Appia sets the long-range direction, while Pontes is the settlement component expected to arrive first.