A brand new session just started. The first issue that all the members decided to discuss is the electronic payment. Sweden reminded to every country that cyber activities are a new phenomenon that has not been properly regulated yet and this lead Greece and Spain to highlight that electronic gambling or betting are increasing enormously. So, the Minister’s proposals focused on controlling the money moving from country to country and combine their authorities in order to minimise the anonymous IP adresses.
Crisis Group’s first update for today was the fact that there have been detected some Cayman papers which include important IP adresses and end up in Estonia. They tansfer money to the Caribbean. The authorities are doing their best to detect the suspect. Upon that the ECOFIN Committee threw some solutions on the table. France and Estonia suggested to secure and reinforce the already existant data and systems. However, Greece disagreed and pointed out the need of a new electronic system which will include three algorithms, one to control Mediterranean stated, the second for the Central States and the last one for the Northern States. The rest of the Ministers supported to work united using high technologies to solve the problem.
Later on, the given solutions are going to be discussed and we will see where this will lead them.
Vasiliki Katsarou, Journalist of ECOFIN, EU Focus
