The European Commission declares it will stimulate the advance of the distributed ledger technology and explore the blockchain’s potential for public services area.

According to the statement of Andrus Ansip, EU Commission Vice-President, the executive arm of the European Union plans to increase support activities in the coming months. The document mentions Decentralised Data Management as an example of support activities but otherwise does not provide much detail concerning the programme’s purposes and tasks.

Answering a parliamentary question last week, Ansip said that “a study will be launched to investigate how DLT can help in reshaping public services and preparing for EU specific DLT actions to address relevant EU challenges.”

According to the statement, the EU Commission intends to organise a blockchain conference with the EU Parliament on “Demystifying Blockchain” and a series of workshops focused on blockchain developments and use cases.

“The Commission is actively monitoring Blockchain and DLT developments. Following the Honourable Member of the European Parliament's Von Weizsäcker's report on Virtual Currencies, the Commission set up a FinTech Task Force. A work stream is dedicated to explore DLT benefits and challenges as well as fields for application in financial services,” it reads.

Last May, the EU Parliament member Jakob von Weizsäcker, initiated a proposal for a measured exploration and monitoring of the blockchain technology.

Later in the summer, the EU Commission announced a plan to establish a centralised database to collect and keep information about digital currency users. According to the plan, the database should be put into operation in June 2019.

Elena Platonova

Image via Flickr