La blockchain it now seems destined for ever more dizzying growth over the next few years. Many consider the technology of the future and credited with an impact on the economy equal to that given to the Internet at the turn of the new millennium. In Italy, however, it seems that few have noticed, despite the flourishing of a good number of dedicated start-ups, which for some time now they ask the institutions to launch a framework of rules that can give certainties and help them grow.
Pending a concrete regulatory response, however, the new attention to the sector registered by Stefano Patuanelli, Minister of Economic Development in the second executive led by Giuseppe Conte. The M5S representative, in fact, published a message on Facebook in which he announced the conclusion, just in these days, of the joint work between the department he led, the Digital Team and the Agency for Digital Italy in order to define the policy priority of the European Blockchain Partnership (EBP).
Blockchain as an answer to the problems of Made in Italy?
However, there is another statement by Patuanelli himself that has opened the hearts of Italian workers in the sector to hope. This is the one relating to the proposal made by the MISE in the direction of the launch of blockchain solutions for the certification, at European level, of Made in Italy products. Considered how the flagship products of our country and the big brands of a long series of key sectors of our economy are subject to manipulation and counterfeiting, we can understand the importance of the announcement in question. Not only for tricolor companies that are subject to unfair competition on world markets, but also for a sector such as that of the blockchain which could make a valuable contribution to employment, where adequately supported by the institutions.
What is EBP and why it is important
The European Blockchain Partnership is a partnership whose launch took place in April last year. 22 eurozone countries participate and has as its main purpose the promotion of blockchain technology, in addition to the development of the sector within the Old Continent, considering it with all evidence strategic to allow European companies to meet the challenge of global competition.
Italy officially joined it in September, when Mirella Liuzzi, Undersecretary for Economic Development had specified how the adhesion of our country to EBP was the first step not only to count more at the European tables, but also to be able to dictate one's own line on the processes connected to innovation and last generation. A task that had been neglected by previous governments, as evidenced by the fact that Italy was not among the founding countries of the partnership.
Liuzzi herself also participated in the European summit on new technologies, which was organized in Malta (called Blockchain Island because of the attention paid to the phenomenon) in the context of EuroMed 7. The decisive role of emerging technologies for the development of southern Europe emerged during that meeting between the main topics under discussion, sealed by the signature of a joint declaration on the future of the digital ecosystem of the Mediterranean area.
