The European Blockchain Services Infrastructure is on its way
The EU's ambition to lead the way on next-generation “hyperscalers”, includes major investments in blockchain. Distributed technologies permeate economic activities and public services at large. Their importance as a driver of growth in the EU's and global economy will likely continue to increase. They have the potential to significantly enhance the way that citizens, governments and businesses interact, by increasing the level of trust between entities.
On 10 April 2018, the Commission, together with the Member States, created the European Blockchain Partnership (EBP). Its aim is to align policies and regulatory approaches to blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies, and develop a trusted, secure and resilient European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI) which will deliver EU-wide cross-border public services leveraging blockchain technology. EBSI will meet the highest standards in terms of privacy, cybersecurity, interoperability, and energy efficiency - fully compliant with EU law.
Blockchain is a form of distributed ledger technology which creates an unchangeable ledger of records maintained by a decentralised network. All records are approved by consensus, with groups of records linked in the ledger, forming a chain. The decentralised nature of blockchain can remove the need for intermediaries during transactions, while the immutability of the ledger helps to promote trust and security. There are numerous use cases in both the public and private sectors where this technology can bring significant benefits.
EBSI aims to have a first operational version up and running in 2020, supporting one or more prototype applications which can be tested by EU Member States. The number of applications supported by EBSI will continue to grow, driven by use cases identified by the European Commission and the Member States.
EBSI will soon be a fully operational Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Building Block, providing reusable software, specifications and services to support adoption by EU institutions and European public administrations. As a CEF Building Block, the European Commission will provide a range of services supporting the reuse of the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure directly. These include the creation and maintenance of open technical specifications, the provision of testing and training services, and onboaridng and communication support. on-boarding.
Visit the EBSI page on the Commission's CEF Digital site to learn more about the project, the selected use cases for 2019, and to get in touch. You can also register for the EBSI newsletter to keep up to date with the latest developments.
To build a Digital Single Market the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) programme funds a set of generic and reusable Digital Service Infrastructures (DSI), also known as Building Blocks. The CEF Building Blocks offer basic capabilities that can be reused in any European project to facilitate the delivery of digital public services across borders and sectors. Currently, there are nine building blocks: Big Data Test Infrastructure, Context Broker, Archiving, eDelivery, eID, eInvoicing, eSignature, eTranslation and EBSI.