Italy, Sweden and the Czech Republic have been tasked with the responsibility of leading the European Blockchain Partnership from July 2019 to July 2020. This appointment was made during the organization’s monthly meeting held in Brussels.
The three countries are tasked with the role of ensuring that the partnership achieves their mission as stated in their 2018 declaration. The declaration reads:
“…the signatories of this declaration agree to cooperate to establish a European Blockchain Partnership with a view to developing a blockchain infrastructure that can enhance value-based, trusted, user-centric digital services across borders within the Digital Single Market.”
Italy joined the partnership in September 2018, four months after the partnership was formed. Sweden and the Czech Republic were among the 21 signatories present when the partnership was being forged.
When Italy was joining the partnership, the President’s Chamber Secretary Mirella Liuzzi (M5S) said:
“Joining the partnership will allow Italy to count at European tables and also to dictate its own line on the development of technology, a practice that has never happened with previous Governments.”
True to this statement, Italy has made many developments towards ensuring blockchain technology is well adopted in the country. In December 2018, the Ministry of Economic Development appointed 30 blockchain experts to develop a crypto strategy for the nation. They were tasked with identifying potential use cases for blockchain in the public and private sectors while developing necessary tools to promote the integration of the technology.
In February 2019, the Italian House of Representatives also approved a bill that defined distributed ledger technologies such as blockchain. The Senate had earlier passed the same bill in January after making the “Decreto semplificazioni” amendments on it.
Reportedly, before forming this partnership, the European Commission had already established the EU Blockchain Observatory and Forum. The Commission invested €300 million ($336 million) in the organization’s Horizon 2020 program, which was aimed at actualizing projects supporting the use of blockchain in Europe.
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