Belgium will assume the presidency of the EU Council, which includes ministers from the member states.
During his six-month presidency, Belgian Digital Minister Mathieu Michel plans to rally political support for an EU-wide blockchain initiative.
Belgium will give Europe’s ambitious blockchain initiative a political boost when it takes over the presidency of the European Council in January, the country’s digital minister said in an interview with CoinDesk.
Mathieu Michel has already shared his grand vision for an EU-wide digital infrastructure that could – at the very least – store data such as driving licenses and property titles on a common blockchain controlled by the bloc’s governments.
Key to that plan is the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) initiative, which started as a technical project in 2018. Michel said the aim is to increase political support for it during the six-month Belgian presidency of the Council and that eight member states are already on board.
“What we will do in the coming months is to propose other European countries to be involved in the project or to use the project for application,” Michel said.
The Council is made up of ministers from the 27 member states of the European Union and is the bloc’s highest political entity.
Fruitful regulations
According to Michel, applications of artificial intelligence and blockchain technology could be crucial to the EU’s pursuit of digital sovereignty, which includes control over data and authority over cyberspace.
When it comes to guardrails for the digital space, the EU has been productive in recent years, introducing legislative plans for everything from crypto to artificial intelligence, data sharing, a digital euro and even the metaverse. In fact, with the Markets in Crypto Asset (MiCA) regulations finalized this year, the bloc is set to become the first major jurisdiction in the world with a comprehensive regime for the digital asset space.
Enough regulations, says Michel. Now it is time for Europe to put these digital innovations to good use.
EU countries were told in 2020 how to join the EBSI blockchain network by setting up their own nodes. But to avoid data silos, the applications built on them must be interoperable between member states – something Michel believes blockchain can help achieve.
“We really pay a lot of attention to privacy, but also to transparency and control over the data. And with the blockchain there is a technical aspect that can bring us that. And that is actually, for example, the interoperability between the application in France, Italy and Spain,” says Michel.
To be the first
Inviting political scrutiny to a technology project will not be a walk in the park. The EU’s major plans for a digital version of the euro are faced opposition from lawmakers in the bloc concerned about the impact on privacy and the expansion of government control.
Michel assures that a uniform blockchain infrastructure will not be designed to collect new data from citizens.
“Today many governments have data on the people, on the citizens. What we are talking about is a small paradigm shift,” he said, adding that the shift has to do with how the government returns that data to citizens.
It is not mandatory to use blockchain, especially if it does not help, Michel said, noting that there is also a chance that blockchain technology could be replaced by something completely different. Quantum computing, which promises ultra-fast problem solutions but is still far from realizing them, is already seen as an existential threat to blockchain.
But that doesn’t mean the EU shouldn’t try, Michel said.
“If you look at Europe’s sovereignty, we were not the first in connectivity. We were not the first in the field of cloud services. Here we could try to be the first with blockchain technology,” says Michel.
“If we are not in advance, it means we are already late,” he added.