Over the past weeks, the 🇪🇺 Parliament has issued two reports on #blockchain. I'll summarize the key points below.

👇

First, an Opinion by the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, which considers the tech 'capable of decentralising forms of human interaction, the markets, banking and international trade'.

europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/…

It informed the 2nd report I'll mention below and focused on the #GDPR, stressing the capacity of blockchains for data protection by design. It mentions zk-SNARKs specifically (but remains mum on implications for AML etc).

The opinion repeatedly refers to blockchains as 'immutable' and stresses the resulting problems for the right to erasure. It also emphasizes the tech's incompatibility with the data minimization requirement.

The opinion also considers that 'blockchain users may be both data controllers, for the personal data that they upload to the ledger, and data processors, by virtue of storing a full copy of the ledger on their own computer'.

The opinion invites the @EU_EDPB 'to issue guidelines and recommendations to ensure that blockchain technology is compliant with EU law' and calls on the @EU_Commission 'to take the lead on the assessment and further development of blockchain technologies'.

Second is a report by the International Trade Committee on 'Blockchain: a forward-looking trade policy' that is very optimistic about blockchains in international trade.

europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.d…

It stresses the value of blockchains in the supply chain (such as to register provenance etc) but stays mum about the garbage-in-garbage-out problem that blockchains are unable to solve.

It further sees potential for #blockchains in #customs and cross-border data flows where a 'private permissioned inter-ledger network can provide trust between platforms by integrating data from multiple sources' (do you need a blockchain for this?)

Also this report focuses on the #GDPR. It notes that blockchains must comply with the #GDPR and that it can be helpful for data protection by design.

It seems to consider that the tech is most helpful where no personal data is involved.

Thee report stresses that data 'should be fully anonymous' (now, if we only knew what that meant......) and calls on @EU_Commission & Member States to fund academic research into how blockchains can be GDPR-compliant.

Also this report refers to zk-SNARKS.

The report warns that blockchain 'should not be used for the processing of personal data until the user organisation concerned is in a position to guarantee compliance with the GDPR and to specifically ensure that the rights to the rectification and erasure of data are protected'

The report further 'deems that any utilisation of blockchain technologies should be anticipated by delineating what will be stored on and off the chain, with personal data stored off the chain'.

Finally, the report also sees blockchains as something beneficial for SMEs (through lower transaction costs and greater efficiency) and stresses the need for solutions re scalability and interoperability.

The report concludes with a call on the @EU_Commission delve further into this and encourages the EU Blockchain Observatory to examine the potential of the tech in intl trade @EUBlockchain.

Finally, the report considers that the EU 'has an opportunity to become a leading actor in the field of blockchain and international trade, and that it should be an influential actor in shaping its development globally'

Btw: you're interested in whether a data subject can / should also be a data controller come to our panel at TILTing 2019 w @lilianedwards @mikarv @JusTechne!! ;-)