I doubt it. The moderator (a Romanian-born lady, by the way) was asking blockchain-related questions to each of the panelists in turn. There has been no other topic discussed but blockchain. And yet when she asked Chiara her opinion the latter went off-course asking if anybody knew about "move 37" and from there it was Alpha Go and AI. Right after she finished, the conversation went back to blockchain.
I think that says something: either they are completely not interested (at corporate level) or they are VERY interested and want to keep it in stealth mode.
About Guoga - saying "they are kept around" would imply that there is a higher kabal that pulls the strings. In national politics there probably is one quite often. At the EP level, the bunch is too diverse, too large and too fractious for any group to be able to pull strings.
Subsequently what you get is the result of a complex equilibrium where everybody pushes in his/her direction as hard as (s)he can, depending on the size of the fraction. So the question is: how strong is the "pro innovation" fraction ?
Let's count:
SPD: Eva Kaili (GR) + Jakob von Weizsäcker (DE)
EPP: Sorin Moisa (RO) + Antanas Guoga (LT)
Not sure if there are other pro-innovation MEPs
Yeah, it's strange she dodged the questions on such a manner. But she might still have no mandate to speak on the subject. I have no idea how Google internal policy works.
On the EP subject, looks like the pro-innovation camp(s) is/are pretty thin. Not a real threat to those with other agendas, I suppose.
Other agendas do not mean "opposite agendas" ... I don't quite see why the "anti-blockchain" camp would be much stronger or have higher resolve ...
Hopefully, you are right. Although they are not always as open and straightforward in their intentions as we are on the blockchain.