Opening speech by Christine Lagarde, President of the ECB, at the ECB conference on “Money in transition: digitalisation and innovation in payments”

Frankfurt am Main, 15 June 2026

Eight centuries ago, the fairs of Champagne were where Europe settled its accounts.

Held throughout the year, they drew merchants from the cloth towns of Flanders to the banking city-states of Italy who came to clear their debts against one another on paper rather than carting silver across the continent. Bills written all over Europe were timed to come due at these fairs, to be reckoned together, so that great sums changed hands with barely a coin in sight. For a time, a divided Europe settled its accounts as one.

Since then, Europe has advanced enormously towards integrated settlement, above all with the euro and the systems that underpin it. But the challenges never stop, and Champagne shows what is at stake if they go unanswered. As tolls rose and new sea routes opened the merchants drifted away,…