Blog post

The Neutral Net in Europe: Reasons for Optimism

Events leading up to the forthcoming European Parliament plenary vote will be the litmus test of the political capital expended on promoting Europe as

Publishing date
03 March 2014
Authors
Jeremy Bowles

When Neelie Kroes recently remarked that disenfranchised startups ought to come to Europe to escape the woes of American regulatory shifts regarding net neutrality, she portrayed only half the picture. Net neutrality certainly matters to startups, but what is less appreciated is how the startups themselves critically matter for the future of the European neutral net. Events leading up to the forthcoming European Parliament plenary vote will be the litmus test of the political capital expended on promoting Europe as a site for innovative young technology companies.

About the authors

  • Jeremy Bowles

    Jeremy, a British citizen, currently works as an economist at the International Growth Centre, a development economics research centre based at the London School of Economics and funded by DFID. He spent the summer of 2013 as a Google Policy Fellow at Bruegel, where he worked on a project linking competition to the standards of internet access across the EU and complementary issues in European internet policy.

    He holds a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford and an MSc from the Oxford Internet Institute at the same university, and has previously worked for Chatham House in London and the UN Development Programme in Beijing.

    His interests lie between technology and economic policy.

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