# Piero Cipollone > [!note] Disambiguation > Not to be confused with [[Pat Cipollone]], the American lawyer who was Trump's White House Counsel (2018–2021). Always link this page by full name; a bare "Cipollone" is ambiguous in this vault. **Piero Cipollone** is an Italian economist and central banker. He has been a member of the [[European Central Bank]]'s six-person Executive Board since **November 1, 2023**, succeeding Fabio Panetta. He is the ECB official most closely tied to Europe's digital-money projects: he chairs the Eurosystem's High-Level Task Force on the [[Digital Euro]], and he is the public face of [[Pontes]] and [[Appia]], the ECB's plans to settle [[Tokenized Assets]] in central-bank money. ## Career Per his ECB CV: | Years | Position | |---|---| | 1992–1994 | Senior adviser to Italy's Minister of Foreign Trade | | 1995–2007 | Economist at Banca d'Italia (Italy's central bank), in the balance-of-payments unit and then research, rising to head of the labour-market unit | | 2007–2010 | President of INVALSI, Italy's national education-assessment institute | | 2011–2014 | Executive Director, World Bank Group (representing Italy and six other countries) | | 2015–2018 | Senior management posts at Banca d'Italia, including currency circulation | | 2018–2019 | Economic adviser to the Italian Prime Minister | | 2020–2023 | Deputy Governor, Banca d'Italia | | Nov 2023– | Member of the ECB Executive Board | He holds an economics degree from Sapienza University of Rome (1982) and an MA in economics from Stanford (1992). The European Parliament endorsed his appointment 509–54, with 40 abstentions (per Wikipedia). **Current ECB chairs:** the High-Level Task Force on a Digital Euro, the Euro Retail Payments Board, and the Euro Cyber Resilience Board for pan-European Financial Infrastructures. ## In his own words > "Pontes brings the stability and trust of central bank money to the European tokenised finance ecosystem." > — ECB press release on the [[Pontes]] launch, September 21, 2026 > "With Appia, we are building a road from today's financial system to tomorrow's tokenised markets, firmly grounded in central bank money." > — [[Appia]] roadmap release, March 11, 2026 At his October 2023 European Parliament appointment hearing, he pitched the [[Digital Euro]] as a payment means "universally accepted throughout the euro area," offering the "highest protection" of privacy and usable online and offline, free of charge. ## Why he's in this vault Cipollone is the European counterpart to the American officials who chose private [[Stablecoin]]s over a [[CBDC]]. His position across both ECB projects is consistent. Retail: a public digital euro alongside cash. Wholesale: tokenized markets should settle in central-bank money, not in private tokens. That makes him the most visible advocate of the road the US [[GENIUS Act]] and [[21st Century ROAD to Housing Act]] did not take. ## See Also - [[European Central Bank]] — the institution - [[Pontes]] · [[Appia]] — the tokenized-settlement projects he fronts - [[Digital Euro]] — the retail CBDC project whose task force he chairs - [[Tokenized Assets]] — the market these projects serve - [[Pat Cipollone]] — the American lawyer with the same surname