France opposes the spread of Libra in Europe

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Mayr called the Facebook Libra project a threat to sovereignty for European countries and called for blocking the spread of this cryptocurrency in Europe.

Le Mayor has consistently been opposing Libra since the first announcement of this project in June.

“Under current conditions, we cannot allow the spread of Libra to the land of Europe,” he said.

In addition to concerns about threats to state sovereignty, Le Mayor considers Libra a threat in the areas of money laundering, counter-terrorism and market dominance.

Further, the French finance minister said he was discussing with Mario Draghi (current president of the ECB) and Christine Lagarde (the most likely candidate for Draghi’s post after his departure) the creation of a “public digital currency.” This is the first such initiative voiced by senior EU officials.

On the other hand, Switzerland does not agree with the concerns of politicians from other European countries. The director of the Swiss financial market surveillance agency (FINMA) is convinced that Libra needs to be regulated internationally and Switzerland is ready for cooperation.

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In an interview with the local daily newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), Mark Brenson stated that a major project like Libra needs to be regulated internationally. It is naive to think that a single country can keep track of a Libra project.

Branson noted that Switzerland is trying to become a global financial center, but this carries reputational risks and, in trying to evade them, less attention is paid to company regulation.

At the same time, the country already has a reliable regulatory framework, which fully meets the requirements of large financial players, and therefore should be suitable for new fintech startups. Therefore, the country does not need pressure from other states in order to understand the difficulty of regulating the project of Libra level.

“From the very beginning it was very clear that this project could have huge dimensions and consequences,” the FINMA director emphasized.

Branson said that even large banks like UBS or Credit Suisse are no longer owned by Switzerland alone. Therefore, the world-class stablecoin Libra should be regulated with the participation of the international community.

“Switzerland does not regulate all forms of institutions and products to the smallest detail. We just published
a guide to classifying stablecoins under Swiss law. And we show: this does not require new laws. Risks are well known, for example, in relation to money laundering, customer protection, system stability. There are already rules for all of this, ”said Mark Branson.

Recently, the Libra Association has applied for a payment system license in Switzerland. Project officials said the FINMA license could “expand opportunities for billions of people.”

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