Belgium to Push European Blockchain Network During EU Council Presidency, Digital Minister Says

Belgium is ready to tackle the presidency of the EU Council, which gathers authorities ministers from member states.

Throughout its six-month presidency, Belgium’s Digital Minister Mathieu Michel plans to assemble political help for an EU-wide blockchain initiative.

Belgium will give Europe’s formidable blockchain initiative a political push when it takes the EU Council presidency in January, the nation’s digital minister stated in an interview with CoinDesk.

Mathieu Michel has already shared his grand imaginative and prescient for an EU-wide digital infrastructure that – on the very least – may retailer information resembling driving licenses and property titles on a standard blockchain managed by the bloc’s governments.

Key to that plan is the European Blockchain Companies Infrastructure (EBSI) initiative, which started in 2018 as a technical challenge. Michel stated the objective is to rev up political help for it throughout Belgium’s six-month Council presidency and that eight member states are already on board.

“Within the coming months, what we’ll do is to suggest to different European nations to be concerned within the challenge or to make use of the challenge for utility,” Michel stated.

The Council gathers authorities ministers from the European Union’s 27 member states and is the bloc’s highest political entity.

Prolific regulation

In keeping with Michel, synthetic intelligence and blockchain expertise functions might be key to the EU’s pursuit of digital sovereignty, encompassing management over information and authority over our on-line world.

In relation to guardrails for the digital area, the EU has been prolific in recent times, introducing legislative plans for all the pieces from crypto to artificial intelligence, data sharing, a digital euro and even the metaverse. In fact, with the Markets in Crypto Asset (MiCA) regulation finalized this year, the bloc is set to become the first major jurisdiction in the world to have a comprehensive regime for the digital asset space.

Sufficient regulation, Michel says. Now, it’s time for Europe to place these digital improvements to good use.

EU nations had been informed in 2020 how one can be part of the EBSI blockchain community by organising their very own nodes. However to keep away from information silos, functions constructed on it must be interoperable throughout member states – one thing Michel stated blockchain may help obtain.

“We’re actually bringing plenty of consideration to privateness, but in addition transparency, management of the info. And with the blockchain, there’s a technical side that may carry us that. And that is actually, for instance, the interoperability between the applying in France, Italy and Spain,” Michel stated.

To be first

Inviting political scrutiny to a expertise challenge isn’t going to be a stroll within the park. The EU’s massive plans for a digital model of the euro have confronted opposition from lawmakers within the bloc who’re involved about privateness implications and the enlargement of presidency management.

Michel assures a unified blockchain infrastructure gained’t be designed to gather any new information from residents.

“Immediately, plenty of governments have information of the folks, of the residents. What we’re speaking about is a bit of little bit of a paradigm shift,” he stated, including that the shift is in the best way the federal government affords that information again to residents.

It’s not necessary to make use of blockchain, particularly if it’s not going to assist, Michel stated, noting there may be additionally an opportunity that blockchain tech might be changed by one thing else altogether. Quantum computing, which guarantees ultra-fast problem-solving however remains to be a long way from coming to fruition, is already viewed as an existential threat to blockchain.

However that doesn’t imply the EU shouldn’t attempt, in line with Michel.

“When you have a look at the sovereignty of Europe, we weren’t the primary at connectivity. We weren’t the primary in cloud companies. Right here, with blockchain expertise, we may attempt to be the primary,” Michel stated.

“If we aren’t upfront, it implies that we’re already too late,” he added.