San Francisco (AFP)

Swiss Finance Minister Ueli Maurer believes that Facebook's Libra digital currency project "has failed in its current form", according to an interview published on Friday by the Swiss chain SRF.

"The central banks will not accept the basket of currencies" on which Libra is supposed to rely, explained the one who is also the outgoing president of the Swiss Confederation, a largely symbolic function.

This statement is yet another blow to the social media giant's project, which is supposed to see the light of day in 2020 but has been heavily contested by the authorities for months.

Libra will in theory be managed by an independent association made up of Geneva-based companies and non-profit organizations.

But at the beginning of October, the payment services PayPal, then Stripe (as well as Visa, Mastercard and others) withdrew from the project, under increasing pressure from American and foreign regulators.

They are indeed worried about potential malicious uses of the currency, and point to the bad reputation of the Californian internet giant in terms of confidentiality and protection of personal data.

States and central banks also fear losing their sovereignty: they are for the moment the only ones to have the right to mint money.

In October, French Minister of Economy Bruno Le Maire announced with his German and Italian counterparts "a number of initiatives to make it clear that Libra is not welcome in Europe, because it is our sovereignty which is at stake ".

Ten days ago, an official from the US Federal Reserve (Fed) once again expressed her fears.

"Without the required collateral, stable networks of digital currencies (backed by a currency or basket of currencies) worldwide can put consumers at risk," Lael Brainard said in a speech in Frankfurt, Germany.

The size of Facebook - with around 2.2 billion people connecting to at least one of its platforms (Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Facebook) every day - implies that the new currency could disrupt the global financial system and render the more difficult task for central banks, had already observed the president of the Fed a few months ago.

The Libra association did not immediately react to requests from AFP.

Questioned in October by the Parliamentary Financial Services Commission to the US Congress, Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg had repeated that the Libra would not be launched until all the necessary green light from regulators has been obtained.

© 2019 AFP