Economy Minister Darko Horvat on Wednesday signed, in the presence of the head of the European Commission Representation in Croatia, Ognian Zlatev, a statement of cooperation whereby a European Blockchain Partnership is established, the Economy Ministry said in a press release.

At a session last week the Croatian government endorsed the Declaration Creating a European Blockchain Partnership and authorised Minister Horvat to sign the document and his ministry to coordinate activities arising from it.

“From the point of view of the economy, blockchain offers us great possibilities since we are a relatively small economy with a large number of quality and competitive ICT personnel. It is a technology that transforms all stored data into a valuable resource that can be used for many purposes and its greatest value is that is entirely transparent and thus immune to possible manipulation and mishandling,” Horvat said at the signing ceremony.

He expressed hope that blockchain technology would soon start functioning as a reliable communication platform between industries and regulators.

“That way, we can transform many sectors in Croatia and room is being created for much greater efficiency of the public and state administration,” Horvat said.

Zlatev, the new head of the EC Representation in Croatia, welcomed Croatia’s decision to join the initiative and commended the current, increasingly visible positive economic trends.

He said that he himself had extensive experience in the process of digitisation in Bulgaria and was familiar with numerous obstacles on the path of digitisation.

The Economy Ministry says in its press release that the signing of the declaration was the first step made by Croatia regarding participation in initiatives connected with blockchain technology development. It implies the possibility of using different financing programmes, the regulation of the legal and standardisation framework, of land books, cadastres and other registers, as well as financial systems.

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.

The idea behind blockchain technology is the creation of decentralised transparent systems into which different data and transactions can be entered to make business processes more accurate, faster and more efficient, the ministry says.