European Budget for 2018 can include at least four different programmes of funding technologies based on blockchain, CoinDesk reports.
One of the blockchain-related amendments was proposed by the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats political party. Is suggests allocating 10 million euros to implementing blockchain as a payments rail for “WiFi4EU" — an EU-wide free Wi-Fi access project with a budget of €120 million euros for three years.
This idea is also supported by Parliamentary Committee on Industry, Research and Energy, which pushes for spending additional sum of 1 million euros for this project.
The budget document which was published last week explains:
"As a starting point, the project will aim at underpinning the voucher scheme of the Wifi4EU project with blockchain technology, allowing for transparent and traceable payment of EU funds to the private companies, which install the Wifi4EU infrastructure. It will also provide the citizens with the tools to examine the transactions registered in the ledger. It will rely on Open Source software and seek collaboration with Member States for providing blockchain services.”
The 2018 budget also includes a proposal to use €1 million euro investment in order to boost DLTs as part of humanitarian efforts by the EU to help companies and groups which aid migrants and displaced groups.
Besides, €1 million euro may go toward the Horizontal Task Force on Distributed Ledger Technology, which aims to analyze how the parliament can effectively utilize DLTs applications and was originally formed in 2015 to watch the development of blockchain and DLT platforms.