The EU member states including Sweden, Germany, France, the UK, and Ireland along with Norway have entered into a European Block Chain Partnership on April 10, 2018. They are committed to establishing EBSI (European Block chain services) for cross border digital public services with higher privacy and security protocols.
Italy is the latest country to join the European partnership in September 2018. The nation is committed to identify and deploy cross border public services using distributed ledger technology (DLT) via EBSI by the end of this year. The member nations are hopeful of making the cross border services including those associated with regulatory reporting and logistics more efficient and safe with the help of DLT. However, the members in this partnership had just three meeting indicating a slow progress towards achieving this goal. According to an interview with Cointelegraph, European Commission wants EBSI a global standard for the large-scale DLTs.
Who are initial members in European Blockchain Partnership?
Initial members in the European blockchain partnership are Estonia, the UK, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Finland, Czech Republic, Poland, Malta, Lithuania, Latvia, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden, Spain, Germany, France, Bulgaria, Austria, and Belgium.
Latest Entrants to European Blockchain Partnership
The countries that joined the European Blockchain Partnership are Romania, Greece, Denmark, Cyprus, and Italy.
Despite entering into an alliance in April this year, the member states are still undecided on which services to be developed first. Pēteris Zilgalvis, Head (Digital Innovation and Blockchain) of the European Commission, said the mission of the partnership is already well defined in the declaration of the member states and now it is mandatory to deliver those services by the end of 2018. Therefore, it is clear that the member states will use that as the basis to develop and roll out the digital cross border services.
EU Nations are working together on Blockchain technology
The EU Blockchain observatory has involved public authorities and private stakeholders in regulatory and technical discussions in implementing blockchain based services in Europe in February. This organization now includes over 1000 stakeholders including renowned experts in DLT and blockchain applications.
The European Commission has pumped in over €80 million to support the blockchain based applications in a societal and technical arena. In order to maintain a lead in innovation, the EU may invest additional €300 million in digitization of services, high-performance computing, AI and cyber security.
