This is an important announcement for all european countries. After some documents and guidelines (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), today the EU Commission launched the EU Blockchain Observatory and Forum with the support of the European Parliament, represented by Jakob von Weizsäcker (responsible for the recent report on virtual currencies).
"Technologies like blockchain can help reduce costs while increasing trust, traceability and security. They have huge potential for making social and economic transactions more secure online by guarding against an attack and removing the need for any middleman. We want to build on Europe's substantial talent base and excellent startups to become a leading world region that will develop and invest in the rollout of blockchain." - said Vice-President for the Digital Single Market Andrus Ansip.
This is an important step for the acceptance and "normalization" of cryptocurrencies in European Countries, and for developing more applications for the blockchain technology as well.
UE will also fund projects about the Blockchain technology for around €340millions in the next 2 years.
Now let's see if this Observatory & Forum will actually work ;)