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 assist 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 mentioned 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 similar to driving licenses and property titles on a typical 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 mentioned the aim is to rev up political assist for it throughout Belgium’s six-month Council presidency and that eight member states are already on board.
“Within the coming months, what we are going to do is to suggest to different European international locations to be concerned within the challenge or to make use of the challenge for utility,” Michel mentioned.
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 know-how functions may very well be key to the EU’s pursuit of digital sovereignty, encompassing management over knowledge and authority over our on-line world.
Relating to guardrails for the digital area, the EU has been prolific lately, introducing legislative plans for every part 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 international locations had been instructed in 2020 be part of the EBSI blockchain community by establishing their very own nodes. However to keep away from knowledge silos, functions constructed on it ought to be interoperable throughout member states – one thing Michel mentioned blockchain might help obtain.
“We’re actually bringing a number of consideration to privateness, but additionally transparency, management of the information. And with the blockchain, there’s a technical side that may carry us that. And that is actually, for instance, the interoperability between the appliance in France, Italy and Spain,” Michel mentioned.
To be first
Inviting political scrutiny to a know-how challenge isn’t going to be a stroll within the park. The EU’s large 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 received’t be designed to gather any new knowledge from residents.
“As we speak, a number of governments have knowledge of the individuals, of the residents. What we’re speaking about is a bit little bit of a paradigm shift,” he mentioned, including that the shift is in the best way the federal government affords that knowledge again to residents.
It’s not necessary to make use of blockchain, particularly if it’s not going to assist, Michel mentioned, noting there’s additionally an opportunity that blockchain tech may very well 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 response to Michel.
“In the event you take 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 know-how, we may attempt to be the primary,” Michel mentioned.
“If we’re not upfront, it implies that we’re already too late,” he added.