[Policy Speech] Global Cooperation for a Global Technology: Blockchain

thank you very much and it's an honor to speak here after the presidential commission chairman and the deputy mayor of Abu Salah blockchain city had - glad to be here in Korea to speak a little bit about our vision coming from the European Union a global governance for a global technology blockchain basically how we governmental bodies can work together to make the investment climate at the development climate for blockchain better we are aiming to establish a leadership role I mean of course along with Asia North America and other collaborators in the area of blockchain we have a joined up political vision in Europe we have 29 soon to 30 European countries that have signed a European blockchain declaration to build together a European blockchain services infrastructure which is going to roll out this year for some reg tech and audit document authentification so not piloting rollout but with some fairly simple use cases we also tried to connect European and global expertise with the EU blockchain observatory and forum which is actually something that's available to all of you a whole set of guidelines reports on things like data protection and blockchain legal aspects of blockchain smart contracts innovation and blockchain we're also investing in research innovation and collaboration academics other institutions from Korea other places in Asia can participate as well our horizon 2020 program is open to the world it is differential in terms of which countries can receive compensation and which have to contribute just like Europe does and we're also promoting an enabling legal framework a pro innovation legal framework one that would be technology neutral and future proofed to allow blockchain and other decentralized technologies to develop we look at blockchain also together with artificial intelligence Internet of I mean I can say I found the first presentation by the CEO of hash mr. Kim to also be very forward-looking and very visionary we share this type of vision for blockchain and data yai and blockchain we see them as being foundational technologies that are deep tech and that they're at a stage of development where the volumes of investments make a difference we know we're investing at the moment less than North America and Asia being here now but if we want to have a leadership role this is where articles are important in English I also my native language Latvian doesn't have articles but here we say a leadership role not the leadership role but we need to invest more so we also have an AI blockchain investment fund that I'll say a few words about the transformative in potential of blockchain and disruption I think I don't see need to say much to the audience at a conference like this one but we see applications in healthcare and supply chains in finance in others and it's more this application to blockchain to industrial sectors though I mean we're also interested in the tokenization and crypto currencies are also present in Europe on investments in AI blockchain this is the fund I was mentioning it's aiming to support to the early-stage blockchain scale ups in Europe and this is something that could also foresee global collaboration and the global blockchain Congress said I'll mention in a few slides we're bringing together investors the World Bank the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development the European Investment Bank the European Investment Fund Asian Development Bank the inter-american Development Bank to talk about how we can support blockchain globally I mean first of all as Development Bank's or as investment actors with public sector applications but in very broad cooperation with the private sector building blockchain enabling blockchain AI ecosystems in Europe were looking for rapid market assessments market consultation to do work on awareness-raising knowledge sharing so through a massive online open course which would be open to everyone worldwide match baking portfolio development and an investment portal which will be online this is just something to say about the related area of FinTech where we're working on understanding if artificial intelligence apps are trustworthy and also utilizing blockchain in this so-called Supervisory tech and this is an example of the research that we fund we not only work on policy and infrastructure issues and on legislation but we also fund research this is what I was mentioning and this is an ongoing project if anyone finds the experience interesting also for regulators supervisors Korea and other places in Asia were very happy to share this information the blockchain partnership this is what I mentioned in all my slides are all going to be available to you so feel free to take pictures of them or to write things down but I'm making the slides publicly available so you can get the details what's interesting here beyond what I just mentioned that the countries are working together soon to be 30 countries 29 now 29 European countries both within the European Union and also the European Economic Area that it'll be open to a public-private partnership so the next step after we launch these use cases across these European countries that we will look to the future with some of the use cases for a public-private partnership and there'll be investments made in this and the digital Europe partnership what was achieved we moved from 22 members religion aliy to 29 had agreements on the deliverables these use cases because I say I mean if I say so myself I think it's fairly interesting we are actually moving to rollout to deployment not piloting a cross-border fairly simple use cases and we're utilizing what's called the connecting Europe fund to finance this so hopefully also a good practice example when it is implemented of how to use public funds to fund public services on the blockchain this is what I mentioned is well the EU blockchain observatory inform it just issued several days ago a new report on legal aspects of blockchain and smart contracts one of the areas we're looking at there's a whole set of reports and also workshops all available online also community open to the globe so if you want to take part in any of those discussions and we also have workshops which I have to say are in Europe we have one coming up on the 29th of October on cybersecurity and blockchain but they're also open to anyone who can be over in Brussels or Frankfurt or Paris where we have them an International Association for trusted blockchain applications this is an international stakeholders organization that we're working with I have to say for the moment it is rather heavily European North American or there's some Japanese and Chinese companies it is interested in also having members from Korea other countries and in Europe so this is open to you moving forward there we go this tells you a little bit about it aiming for interoperability working in working groups like areas like finance also on supply chain also on energy for instance anyone who's interested in that is more than welcome to take part along with them and with a loss tria the spanish blockchain alliance we are organizing convergence the global blockchain congress in malaga among other things we'll have a session with the CEO of Facebook Libre together with the director-general of financial markets in the European Commission the European Central Bank the Brazilian central bank the Japanese central bank all taking part obviously there's multiple countries here but Korean regulators governmental people are invited as well as private companies and also for the other countries that are present here Singapore has been invited but I know unfortunately we clash unintentionally with the Singapore FinTech festival but I've obviously other countries as well we'd be glad to see you there legal study right now we are undertaking a study ourselves we have a a new set of politicians coming in for those of you who are probably most people who are outside of Europe don't know we have a new president coming in a new set of Commissioners who are the politicians that run the organization I'm a I'm a civil servant in preparation for their new working program we are looking at areas like smart contracts is the current legal framework sufficiently clear to ensure the mutual recognition of smart contracts and clarified jurisdiction in case of legal disputes I mean I found it very interesting the presentation by Nick Szabo that you know for these types of smart contracts how they could just work automatically on the basis of collateral we're also considering because we have the immediate issue that we are not one country we're 28 jurisdictions that and if there's not a European legislative instrument a law that's covering things it's just the national law national contract law so if we want smart contracts to work in Europe do we need to have a common framework and as I say this is very much with a question mark there's not a decision made yet but we're very interested in continuing the discussion also with Asian policymakers whether you think within your own countries or across borders this is needed tokenization this is another very important area is the current legal framework in Europe appropriate for issuing and trading tokens crypto assets when they are not considered as financial instruments because we have a securities framework it's a question whether perhaps that needs to be adapted better for securities tokens or for so-called payments tokens the utility token question we do very much share this vision of having let's say data coming from the internet of things being managed by the blockchain utilizing smart contracts being analyzed utilized by artificial intelligence all the time with the citizen the owner of the data in control determining it through his or her instructions so again this is something that we're thinking about if you're interested in some of the background there's the new EU blockchain observatory report which I mentioned which was just published it's online also the opinions of the European Banking Authority European find the European securities and markets authority a study of the European Commission which we'll be finishing on the 2nd of December in fact again if anyone wants to be in Brussels let me know you can be invited to that workshop and as I said at the end we have a new European Commission a new set of politicians now from November and with that I say thank you and how to say after my speech and in this event and in other places I'm very happy to either get your inputs or hear from you about this global Congress other issues your your legal advice you can also find me on on Twitter on various social media I'm happy as well to hear your feedback and hear about how we can cooperate I mean myself from the side of Europe along with all my collaborators in the European Union with you across Asia and across the world so thank you very much for your attention thank you thank you very much [Music]