On 29 May 2018, Romania’s Minister of Research and Innovation, Nicolae Burnete, signed the joint declaration on which the partnership is based, thus enabling Romania to directly share its innovative contributions with the rest of Europe. Apart from becoming a member of the European Blockchain Partnership, Romania has also signed the Declaration of Cooperation on Artificial Intelligence and joined the Innovation Radar.
Today Romania is joining three EU initiatives that aim to speed up the digitisation of Europe’s society and economy and boost European digital performance globally.
23 EU countries have previously joined the European Blockchain Partnership, a platform for exchanging experience and expertise in technical and regulatory fields and preparing for the launch of EU-wide blockchain applications across the Digital Single Market, for use in both the public and private sectors. 25 countries are already part of the Declaration of Cooperation on AI and have committed to working together on the key issues raised by AI, from ensuring Europe’s competitiveness in its research and deployment to dealing with social, economic, ethical and legal questions.
What is next for the Partnership?
Since April 2018 the Partnership has held monthly meetings with the aim to develop a trusted, secure and resilient European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) meeting the highest standards in terms of privacy, cybersecurity, interoperability and energy efficiency, as well as fully compliant with EU law. The ambition of the Partnership is to make this trusted infrastructure accessible to support digital services deployed by public and eventually in the future also private actors.
As per the mandate of the Joint Declaration signed on the 10th of April 2018, the Partnership will complete by end of 2018 the identification of the first set of use-cases for cross-border digital public services where blockchain technology can be of added-value. The Partnership will also develop a set of Guiding Principles and Specifications for the EBSI that will be enhanced to be recognised as a reference for development of blockchain infrastructures, and will propose a model to describe the overall policy and technical governance of the EBSI.
In December 2019, the European Blockchain Partnership also started an open market consultation in preparation of the European Blockchain Pre-Commercial Procurement that is looking for novel, improved blockchain solutions for the future evolution of the European Blockchain Service Infrastructure. Interested market parties are invited to participate in the open market consultation activities.
Signatory Countries of the Declaration:
The Blockchain partnership declaration was launched at the Digital Day 2018, and was signed by twenty-one EU Member States: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, UK*. Norway was also a signatory.
Other countries have joined since the launch of the initiative:
- Greece signed on 23 May 2018.
- Romania signed on 29 May 2018.
- Denmark signed on 1 June 2018
- Cyprus signed on 4 June 2018
- Italy signed on 27 September 2018
- Liechtenstein signed on 1st of February 2019
- Hungary signed on 18 February 2019
- Croatia signed on 16 October 2019
* in the context of Brexit, UK is no longer an active member of the European Blockchain Partnership.
