The European Commission is launching a €250,000 study to assess the opportunity and feasibility of EU Blockchain Infrastructure.

The study aims to assess if, when, and how blockchain technologies may help public authorities to deliver European services and implement policies in an optimized way. It will examine opportunity, benefits, and challenges of a range of options, including an enabling framework at EU level or an infrastructure supporting blockchain-based services.

The EC said that it is closely monitoring the developments in the blockchain space with the objective of setting the right conditions for an open, innovative, trustworthy, transparent, and EU law compliant data and transactional environment. The blockchain study will provide a clear understanding about the level of intervention required as well as the opportunity, value added and conditions for a EU action.

“The overall objective is to help creating conducive environments for implementing more effective public policies, easing private sector engagement with the authorities, developing innovative ecosystems and applications, showing leadership and reinforcing the competitive edge of Europe and its blockchain innovators at a global level,” it said. “The study will examine the existing initiatives at national or local level and will address how to dimension such an infrastructure at EU level, including which services could run on such infrastructure.”

The call for tenders is now open and the last day for the receipt of tenders is 19 January 2018.