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bne July 2018 Companies & Markets I 23
CE Galileo navigation system and the EU navigation agency contributed by €105mn to the Czech economy
IntelliNews Pro
The EU’s Galileo navigation system and the Prague-based European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency (GSA) added around CZK2.7bn (€105mn) to the Czech economy, a Slovak diplomat and Vice-President of the Euro- pean Commission Maros Sefcovic said on June 1.
Galileo is a global navigation satellite system (GNSS) being developed by the EU and it is under the GSA auspices. The agency helps the Czech economy by making use of local companies, which are technically better prepared for other projects, Sefcovic said.
GSA is the only EU agency based in Czechia, a badge of pres- tige for the country.
The navigation system should be ready by 2020 by when it will account for up to 10% of the EU’s GDP. Under a new budget, the investment into the system has been to €16bn over this period.
Galileo will be used for traffic control, healthcare, agriculture and security. Bank transactions and electricity transfer will be more efficient, the Vice-President said. The system will use 30 satellites and should be more accurate than the US rival GPS system.
Russia preliminarily adopts crypto-unfriendly legislation
Russia has made the first step towards the adoption of a long-awaited legislation on cryptocurrencies and blockchain, but major questions concerning specifics still remain, while experts warn that in its current shape the legislation is far from being crypto-friendly.
In late May, the State Duma, the lower chamber of Russian Parliament, adopted in the first reading a package of three draft laws, which are expected to bring regulation into the crypto space.
In order to become law, the drafts will have to pass the second and third readings, get approval from the upper chamber, the Federation Council, and ultimately be signed by the president.
And while the preliminary adoption is viewed as a major step towards crypto regulation by the local crypto community, experts and industry insiders have raised a number of concerns.
"If adopted, the new laws won't be conducive to effective regulation, but will trigger a massive migration of investors, miners and entrepreneurs to countries with a more crypto- friendly legislation, such as Switzerland, Malta, Estonia, and Belarus," Yuri Pripachkin, president of the Russian association of cryptocurrency and blockchain (RACIB), told bne:tech.
"Foreign investors will also cancel their plans for executing projects on the territory of our country," he went on to say. "As a result, the Russian crypto industry will lose millions of dollars, which will be redirected to other jurisdictions."
One of the biggest issues that observers have with the adopted legislation is its failure to proclaim cryptocurrencies as a legitimate means of payment. In addition, none of the drafts provide a clear definition of cryptocurrencies or digital money. Similarly, no guidelines for crypto asset tax reporting are pro- vided by the draft laws.
For more than a year now, senior Russian officials have been talking about digital economy and development of cutting- edge technologies, of which blockchain is an important part.
However, based on the adopted drafts, Russian legislators appear keen to embrace a digital economy but bypass cryptocurrencies, which, experts warn, isn't a good idea.
"The adoption of the drafts law in their current shape is threat- ening to disrupt plans for digitisation of the Russian economy," Pripachkin said. "The government's unfriendly steps could become obstacles in the way of retaining and multiplying our intellectual capital, such as blockchain developers, IT special- ists, coders and visionaries."
In accordance with the draft laws, the mining of cryptocurren- cies will become a legitimate activity, and miners will have to register and pay taxes. Still, clauses pertaining to cryptocur- rency mining remain vague, lacking specifics of the taxation of cryptocurrency mining.
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