EU officials are prospecting direct funding for emerging technologies, including blockchain.

Dominik Schiener expressed:  “IOTA is well-positioned for this great strategic initiative by the European Union: EU set to invest $177B in blockchain and other novel technologies.”

The European Union is planning to improve technological development in the region with their planned $177 billion investment.  The EU officials are prospecting to fund direct investments in sectors like blockchain, data infrastructure, 5G, and quantum computing, among several others.

The planned $177 billion investment fund is nearly 20% of the 750 billion euros ($887 billion) stimulus package, which was agreed upon by the EU leaders way back in July 2020.  This was decided upon to kick start economic recovery during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Ursula Von Der Leyen, President of the European Commission, reinstated the importance of investing in digital technology for the entire region.

A part of the investment fund is set to be allotted for the manufacturing of low-power processors as the EU officials are looking to prevent a recurrence of the semiconductor shortage, which recently affected several industries across the globe.  The focus area for the $177 billion technology investment fund is obvious; however, there is no clear demarcation about the amount that will be invested in each sector.

The IOTA Foundation, along with six other companies, were selected to support the early-stage development of the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure, which is an EU-wide distributed ledger technology project.

The six other companies are:  IOV42 Ltd Stichting Dyne.org, Infocert Spa, Riddle and Co,  Orange Business Belgium SA, Chromaway AB, Billon Spolka Z Ograniczona Odpowiedzialnoscia, Westpole Belgium, Net Service Spa, Flosslab s.r.l.

On September 07, 2021, IOTA expressed:  Building a distributed ledger technology for Europe. IOTA was selected to participate in EBSI, the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure, by EU Commission Connecting EU.

Community response:  Good luck. Have been a believer from the first wallet (which sucked!), but Trinity and Firefly were great improvements. I can’t wait for coordicide. Fascinating project.

EBSI is set to be the platform for EU-wide cross-border public services around decentralized identity, digital twins, circular economies, and more.

These are all use cases IOTA is uniquely suited for. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano, Solana, Polkadot, and so on have not been selected. IOTA is the only permissionless DLT protocol involved.

I have been invested since 2017, and IOTA has frequently put their name next to a big brand or organization with close to no results in the end (Microsoft, Jaguar, etc.). I wish there were less announcements and more adoption.