Europe has taken important steps to shape its financial future, from advancing integrated payments and digital financial regulation to exploring tokenised markets and the next generation of financial infrastructure. As AI and new forms of digital money reshape the financial landscape, central banks must continue to navigate their responsibilities for monetary and financial stability while responding to the opportunities and risks that innovation presents.

This dialogue brings together European central bank leaders to reflect on what Europe’s experience so far reveals about navigating financial innovation, how different approaches have emerged across markets, and what the next phase will require. As technology advances at an accelerating pace, is policy keeping up - and should it move faster? The discussion will explore how central banks should approach their role in this environment, and whether trade-offs between innovation, stability and sovereignty are inevitable.

As financial systems evolve, central banks face a dual challenge -modernising the infrastructure that works today while building the foundations for what comes next. This means making strategic choices around the future of digital money and settlement, wholesale and retail systems connectivity across borders, and the interoperability, liquidity and governance arrangements that underpin them. At the same time, an increasingly AI-enabled financial system is raising the bar for the safety, reliability and resilience of critical payment infrastructure. This panel will discuss the key building blocks for the next generation of payments and where deeper cross-border collaboration can deliver capabilities that individual jurisdictions cannot achieve alone.