Announcing a major breakthrough on Tuesday, European Digital Currency & Blockchain Technology Forum (EDCAB), a new Brussels based public policy platform for digital currencies and distributed ledger technologies, said that the European Parliament's influential Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs has voted to adopt its virtual currencies and blockchain report by 54 votes to 1; paving the way for a vote of the full parliament at May's plenary meeting.

The vote comes as the Commission considers measures to bring virtual currency exchange platforms under the scope of the existing Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Directive which is due for an update. It follows last week's vote of the Committee on Internal Markets and Competition vote adopting its Opinion on the report.

Speaking with CoinDesk, EDCAB founder Siân Jones described the vote as part of a larger movement to regulate virtual currency exchange platforms under existing AML controls.

The report, authored by Jackob Von Weizsäcker (S&D), among other things proposes the setting up of a taskforce, overseen by the Commission, to regulate virtual currencies and proposing recommendations for any necessary legislation to regulate the sector.

In addition, the report cautions against a “heavy handed approach” to this new technology, which, it says, has the potential offer significant opportunities for the consumer and economic development.

"To avoid stifling innovation, we favour precautionary monitoring instead of pre-emptive regulation. But, IT innovations can spread very rapidly and become systemic. That's why we call on the Commission to establish a taskforce to actively monitor how the technology evolves and to make timely proposals for specific regulation if, and when, the need arises”, said Mr Von Weizsäcker.

Last week, EDCAB organized a flagship roundtable series in the European Parliament that discussed the potential of digital currency and blockchain technology as well as the need for appropriate regulation in this sector.

The European Central Bank has already shown its interest in blockchain technology. Yves Mersch, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB, recently suggested that the ECB has launched some experimental work with distributed ledger technologies (DLTs).