Croatia will sign a statement of cooperation establishing a European Blockchain Partnership, the government decided at its cabinet meeting on Thursday.

The government endorsed the Declaration Creating a European Blockchain Partnership and authorised Minister of Economy, Entrepreneurship and Crafts Darko Horvat to sign the document.

Blockchain technology enables distributed public ledgers that hold immutable data in a secure and encrypted way and ensure that transactions can never be altered.

“Distributed ledger technology” (DLT) is finding a broad range of uses. Data storage, financial transactions, real estate, asset management and many more uses are being explored.

Horvat underscored that blockchain technology is completely transparent and immune to manipulation, corruption and absolutely trustworthy and tested.

He added that this technology is applicable to a broad range of industries – energy, health, security, finance, all data storage registers, etc.

The minister noted that most EU member states had signed the declaration which creates an international space for research and development of that technology as well as access to funds of €300 million which will be made available to member states.

He explained that 24 EU member states had signed the declaration on the use of blockchain technology and that many had already recognised its value.

Horvat presented the example of Slovenia which created 13,000 jobs directly or indirectly connected to developing blockchain technology and related projects.

One of the benefits of this technology could be to remove the possibility of mishandling the counting of votes and election results, Horvat added.