Belgium plans to accelerate the development of a European blockchain infrastructure during its presidency of the EU Council in early 2024, the government said. The proposal aims to facilitate the secure storage of official documents such as driving licenses and property titles.
The development of public blockchain for pan-EU infrastructure is one of the four priorities of the upcoming Belgian presidency, the country’s State Secretary for Digitalization, Mathieu Michel, told Science|Business media on November 21. The other three initiatives will be adopted. the issues of artificial intelligence (AI), online anonymity and the skills needed for the digital economy.
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Michel proposes to restart the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) project, set up in 2018, in collaboration with the European Blockchain Partnership, consisting of the 27 EU Member States plus Norway and Liechtenstein:
“That is a technical project. If we want to build a common infrastructure, it must become a European project and a political project.”
The revamped EBSI would be renamed Europeum and used for public administration tasks such as verifying driving licenses and other documents across the EU. According to Michel, the project could also support the digital euro infrastructure.
The official said it would be important to use the public blockchain developed by EU member states, and not the private alternatives:
“In terms of security, transparency and privacy, the blockchain can return control to citizens over the data that belongs to them.”
Currently, Italy, Croatia, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Luxembourg and Romania have already signed up to the Europeum plan. The project’s headquarters will be located in Belgium.
The process of consolidating regulations around crypto and blockchain is moving steadily. In early November, just under fifty national governments made a joint commitment to “rapidly implement” the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF), a new international standard for automatic exchange of information between tax authorities, into their national legal systems.
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