View source for Economy – How ICT can foster growth and development in Europe? – PL 04 2014

13 June 2014 | 9:30-11:00 <br />
[[Programme overview 2014|'''Programme overview 2014''']]<br /><br />

== Session subject ==
 
* The role of SMEs in the digital economy
* How to reduce regulatory barriers to innovation to compete with global markets
* New online business models 

== Session description ==  

What challenges and opportunities do IT-SMEs and Start-ups face in Europe?: Finding a European Path – addressing issues such as:

* Single digital market but cultural, language, tax, administrative hurdles
* Growing entrepreneurial culture but continued reluctance by investors 
* New online business models and the use of meta / big data
* Internationalization of IT-SMEs
* Cross-border interference with Internet infrastructure 
* Financing / Venture Capital / Tax issues
* Access to qualified labour
* Access to R&D

== Breakout Sessions ==

11:30 - 13:00h

* Practical Examples: Successful European IT-SMEs addressing the issue of internationalization (Proposal 69): Session moderator: Dr. Oliver Grün
* Internet business models in Europe: There is a common view, that the "Internet is for free". Users are not aware of business models which create value e.g. from meta data / big data (proposal 45): Session moderator: Ulrich Kohn
* Geographic Top Level Domains (GeoTLDs): between profitability and public interest (proposal 4): Session moderator: Dirk Krischenowski

For more details on breakout sessions see:
[http://www.eurodig.org/wiki/Talk:Economy_%E2%80%93_How_ICT_can_foster_growth_and_development_in_Europe the discussion tab] on the upper left side of this page.

== People ==
* '''Focal points''': 
* Linda van Renssen, [http://www.load-ev.de LOAD - Verein für Netzpolitik (Association for Network Policy)] 
* Dirk Krischenowski, [http://dotberlin.de dotBERLIN GmbH & Co. KG (.berlin Top-Level-Domain)]
* Dean Ceulic 
* Jimmy Schulz, [http://digital-guerilla.org LOAD - Verein für Netzpolitik (Association for Network Policy)]
* '''Live moderator''': Varinia Bernau
* '''Rapporteur''': [http://www.eurodig.org/eurodig-2010/olivier-crepin-leblond Olivier Crepin-Leblond]
* '''Remote participation moderator''': Farzaneh Badii, Hamburg University
* '''Digital facilitator''': [[User:Sonia|Sonia]]
* '''Panelists/speakers''': 
* Alexander Riedl, Deputy Head of Unit, European Commission DG CONNECT
* [http://www.eurodig.org/miriam-rupp Miriam Rupp, Founder & CEO Mashup Communications]
* [http://www.eurodig.org/dirk-krischenowski Dirk Krischenowski, Geo-Top-Level-Domain Interest Group]
* [http://www.eurodig.org/jan-krancke Dr. Jan Krancke, Vice President Deutsche Telekom, Head of Regulatory Strategy & Economics Division]
* [http://www.eurodig.org/thijl-klerkx Thijl Klerkx, Entrepreneur]
* '''Key Participants''': 
* Nadine Karbach, IJAB 
* [http://www.eurodig.org/wiki/User:ThomasSchauf Thomas Schauf, Head of European & International Affairs, German Association of the Digital Economy (BVDW)]
* [http://www.eurodig.org/oliver-grun Dr. Oliver Grün, VP PIN-SME, President, BITMi]
* [http://www.eurodig.org/detlef-dauke Detlef Dauke, Ministerial Director, Head of Innovation, IT, and Communications policy, BMWi]

== Format of this working group at EuroDIG ==  

Plenary 

== Protocol. Discussions == 

See the discussion tab on the upper left side of this page

== Further reading == 

== Messages == 
Reporter: ''Olivier Crepin-Leblond, ICANN’s At-large Advisory Committee (ALAC)''
# Adapt education systems and encourage entrepreneurship with young people
# Change attitudes to risk-taking and address the stigma of failure in European Society
# Speed up European integration of the regulatory environments and make the regulatory environments agile to support and not hinder the evolution of technology and business
# Reboot Europe – stop putting barriers up to protect the past at the expense of promoting the future – because the Internet is a chance for everyone.

== Video Record ==
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqx4v4M8c5g

== Transcript ==
Provided by: Caption First, Inc., P.O. Box 3066, Monument, CO 80132, Phone: +001-719-481-9835, www.captionfirst.com 



''This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.''



>> JIMMY SCHULZ: Dear Michael, thank you very much. 

I’d like to introduce you to the next panel, the plenary number 4, which is how ICT can foster growth and development in Europe. 

Just take a seat and I’m going to introduce you right now. 

Okay. Everyone is taking a seat. Every one has a seat. That’s great. 

So good morning. And I’m proud to see so many people awake this morning after a long night of football. 

Let me introduce the participants to you. First of all, I’d like to start with the youngest participant, that is Thijl Klerkx. He is 19 years old and founded his first Internet company at the age of 12. Sold it after half a year. And three years later he convinced an investor and entrepreneur to invest in another company, which he is a CEO today. So welcome. 

Next participant is Dirk Krischenowski, founder and CEO of dotBERLIN. DotBERLIN is one of the gTLDs, and maybe you could talk more about that later. You’re doing a breakout session also on that issue. 

Dr. Jan Krancke, Vice President of Deutschee telekom, and heads a regulatory economics division. 

Alexander Riedl, Deputy head of the knowledge base and unit of the European Commission. 

Miriam Rupp, founder and CEO of Mashup Communications. 

And last, myself, Jimmy Schulz, CEO of Cybersolutions, founder of Cybersolutions, and former member of the German Parliament. 

I’d like to start. We are going to talk about the role of small- and medium-sized enterprises in the ICT sector in Europe, and concerning the Internet governance stuff. Where are we going to start? I think maybe what is the role of small- and medium-sized enterprises in Europe is quite different than it is in some other part of the world. Small- and medium-sized enterprises are the backbone of our economy in Germany and in Europe. And they do have, as it seems, more problems to grow. Are there any barriers we have more than in, for example, the U.S.? Maybe that is something the Commission could talk about is are there any barriers that are – well, that the small- and medium-sized enterprises have problems to grow faster, to interact in the global market?

>> Well, first of all, and good morning. I should start with a little context, actually. We need first to define actually what we are talking about here. And the Web and digital technology brings plenty of new opportunities, first of all. And there are new business models. Small companies are very often disruptive innovators, so they play a very important role in disruptive innovation, not marginally improving things and so on. So they are very important for the ecosystem. And there is a huge acceleration of the speed of doing things out there in the economy. So the speed of doing business is not the same as it was, say, five or ten years ago. 

So there is a paradigm shift and that has, of course, also an impact on the, say, regulatory framework but also on the market itself. So companies need clear and simple rules. They need no blockages to do their business. They need access to resources. But if you look at the reality, actually, the reality is very different. So there is a highly complex regulatory environment in Europe that at least in the – if you look at the 28 Member States, there are 29 legal systems, because you have the 28 national systems, plus the European system and so on. And there is also, in terms of new disrepresentative developments, in general, a slow reaction of regulators. And so there is lots of evidence for that. So first of all I’d like to acknowledge that there is a mismatch here somehow. And so that is a little bit of context. 

Now, if we look at the – and I was it sitting in the plane this morning making a few notes here. If you look at the barriers and possible solution, of course I could do like the standard speech. You know, we have one, two, three, four or five different things and the Commission has done a report and we do a study and so forth. But most of us know what the issues are. And I’d just like to mention a few examples here. 

For me, the biggest issue is that there is no real digital single market in Europe and there are quite a few cross-border obstacles, whether they are in the area of contract law or taxation, labour law, compliance, or in the area of standardization. And here, if I can say what the Commission is doing or could do, the Commission should perhaps look at a new role instead of legislating to build a regulatory framework. We should also look at how can we remove some obstacles in existing legislation, including national and European legislation. And there are a number of proposals in the pipeline. 

A second area is, of course, access to resources, finance, skills, and so on. 

And the third one, which is more longer term, is the question of culture and education. Of course, that is really something that we need to change in Europe, not because we know that it is a problem today but we acknowledge that the problem is going to grow as Europe is getting older. And in general, say, the risk attitude of all the people is, as we know – older people is, as we know, not really the one which we need to start new businesses in Europe. 

So that’s perhaps just some introductory remarks from my side. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: Thank you very much. 

Miriam, you are an entrepreneur ,and can you react on that? How do you see that? Are there any orders that pull the problems for small- and medium-sized enterprises in Germany, in Europe, to get into the market faster? 

>> MIRIAM RUPP: I’m not just an entrepreneur, but I worked for many startups, that’s probably why I’m sitting here. I worked for more than 100 startups in the digital industry so far. And as we can see from the taxi strike in Berlin, Paris, and other cities, where the taxi drivers want to push away an innovative service like Uber, that is currently conquering the users smartphones and how they travel within cities, like peer-to-peer traveling or commuting in the city. And then there is a huge strike and taxi drivers have apparently made their standing in preventing an innovative company from doing what the users want. 

And it’s little struggles like this where I think it’s a big, big step backwards for a modern society. And what we can make out of the things that have been developed, that have been introduced to the market, that people want. But there are so many obstacles on regulatory fields that are a big burden for many startups I have worked with so far. 

And also, for other small- and medium-sized companies that might not be as digitally or haven’t arrived quite yet in the digital area, I see a big problem in the literacy, just Internet literacy, in terms of legal literacy, in terms of the language of the Internet, coding, and also in terms of privacy and how you can – what you can do as a company to fulfill or to make it easier for people to understand what you actually do. And also to become more literate as a company to prepare for the future in terms of legal issues, in terms of technical issues. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: Thank you. Now we heard the view of the small- and medium-sized enterprises. Maybe you could tell us a bit from – well, the big company, from Deutschee Telekom, how is this view on that issue? 

>> JAN KRANCKE: Thank you for organizing this panel. I totally agree with what both of our colleagues just said. So it’s not a question of big or small companies that some changes in the environment are more detrimental in Europe than compared to other regions in the world. It’s definitely true, as Mr. Stefan Kapferer at the beginning said, the industrial or digitization of all industries, I think it’s a key trend we have. And we have to support. And this is definitely a pool for growth, for innovation in Europe, and for creation of new jobs. So this is definitely the right trend to go. 

What I would like to highlight is a bit more, so to say, the International dimension, where Europe stands compared to other regions in the world. So how currently we see Europe compared to other regions in the world falling behind in terms of ICT capabilities. So the question is, what is the reason behind it? Where are we and what are the necessary steps to change?

If we look at big regions, of course there are differences. But if I make it only for you, the region, I take the American approach, where we have a huge cluster of innovation. And the key strategy coming out of this is companies in the structure, the winner takes it all. So we have big companies close in itself. So Apple is a good example. It’s a closed system in itself. It’s undoubtedly a brilliant service, but it’s a closed trough with all attached problems we may have. 

If you go in the other direction of the world, a direction easier, in China, we see clearly state-geared companies or state-supported companies growing big, being able to compete. 

So what we all know is that in the digital environment, scale matters. So the environment is important to reach scale. And exactly, this is, I would say, the detrimental effect in Europe on politics and regulatory environment we have, where it is difficult to reach the necessary scale for companies to compete on a global level. 

These missing scale, of course, is partially part of I would say European structure. European culture in general. So we have more countries, not one or two countries, we have different languages, we have different cultures. So all these issues are inherently different in Europe. But nevertheless, I think we have a good chance to gain scale and I just want to highlight or propose for debate for key issues what I think politics can do in Europe and in Germany to strengthen the European digitization not only the ICT sector in itself but of course the resulting digitization of other industries. 

So first of all, we need an environment which is helpful for technical entrepreneurship supporting small startups. We have a couple here starting in Berlin: Hooplen, Google, the ideas came up. We are supporting these startups. The key thing in these areas is the financing, not the seed financing but the following financing, as I understand it. This is a key function that doesn’t function very well in Germany, in Europe. 

The second point which may not be a surprise to you that I raise it here is the key point that all our digitization will not function without having the underlying infrastructure. So the key issue where Europe lags behind is infrastructure, is investment. May it be mobile or fixed. May it be the necessary access speeds and so on. 

So why is this so? We can go into a lot of detailed discussions, but for sure the regulatory environment in Europe is not really helpful if the sole goal is achieving lower prices, which is definitely beneficial for customers in the short-term but which leads to the situation that we have, that investment is lower than it should be. 

The third proposal I would like to make is to focus on clustering. Because what we see in Europe is quite a dispersed environment where we do not support enough the clustering or putting together knowledge of different pools. So increase exchange. So especially if you talk about industry 4.0 issues, where do we have a cluster orl whatever? eHealth or eAutomotive or all these issues coming up. Politics may support enhancing cluster areas, so that entrepreneurs in these fields can exchange and increase innovation, especially innovation speed. 

The last point I want to raise, and it was already raised from the first panelist, is the question of interoperability and standardization. As I said, the American model is more based on a closed system. I think the European strength, and we really can use it in the future, is openness. Europe is open in the – much more open and interconnected in these fields. But what we do need for it is to define the borders, to define the standards for interoperability, and really to increase a setting for open standards, for open European platforms, maybe for all these industry 4.0 issues would be extremely helpful and to put definiteness of the European culture and history. And, additionally, helping the European industry to gain speed and scale on the global level. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: Thank you very much. 

You’ve been addressing politics. And I think politicians will hear what you say – at least one member of German Parliament is in the room. Good morning, Thomas. Thank you very much for coming. I think it’s great that politicians come here and listen to what we are saying here. 

But we have been talking about, and you just mentioned about the chances and the opportunities young entrepreneurs have. And you’ve been founding a couple of companies, being very young, and took the chance and just did it, which is very great. 

But where do you see the barriers that in Europe and I think you’ve seen that, too, it’s harder than in some other places on earth to get started in a global company. What are your – well, you did it, but what is the difference? 

>> THIJL KLERKX: First of all, thanks for the invite and thanks for RIPE NCC and the IGF for sponsoring me to be here. I like to be positive, so let’s not make the issues bigger than they are. Because in the end, of course ,it’s possible if you have an idea and you want to do it, to just do it. 

But I think the most important issue I see is what you mention, culture and education. So when I first came up with, like, a serious business idea, I was like 14 or 15 years old, which was actually the idea of my current company, which is a grocery delivery service bike. We deliver organic groceries to homes and offices in Amsterdam. The first thing all my friends and parents said to me was well, I don’t know if you should do it, but if you do it, please be careful. Please try to use as little capital as possible. And then if it works out, you can try to do it bigger and bigger. First try to do it as small as possible. Be careful and don’t put too much money in. Don’t put too much time in. Make sure you go to school as well, still. 

So everyone started telling me, basically, not to do it. So I just did it, in a way. And it’s been probably the best experience that I’ve had. Although I have to admit actually I kept going to school, but it took me eight years instead of six. Actually, yesterday when I was at one of the workshops, meanwhile, I got the message that I passed my high school exam. So finally – 

(Applause)

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: Congrats. 

>> THIJL KLERKX: Thanks. I’m finally done with high school, but it took me longer but it was worth it. I think it’s a combination of the culture that everyone wants to avoid risks. And nobody is telling you just try, just go for it. And I think the reason may be we have all been so spoiled. I mean, we are all very rich here. We have got a lot to lose. So if I just go to school and then go to the University afterwards, I’ll probably have a nice job and I’ll make a lot of money and I don’t really have to worry that much. Of course the last few years maybe it’s a bit different. But still chances are you’ll be doing good. So I’ve got a lot to lose. And that’s the reason why I don’t want or at least many people don’t want to take too many risks to see if there is not even more to gain, maybe. 

But education, yes, at school, there is no attention at all for entrepreneurs. When I had to choose after three years of school which direction I wanted to do, I met – the school made me meet a lawyer and a doctor and an architect and everyone, but not a single entrepreneur. And when I told – when I had my business idea for the first time, and I told it to my classmates, one of the girls said like: “Thiji, I don’t think you should start a business. I think it’s nothing for you.” And I asked why. She said “I just can’t imagine you wearing a suit.” Here I am wearing a suit, but that’s a very rare situation. But of course wearing a suit has nothing to do with entrepreneurship, but the only thing she knew about entrepreneurs is that they probably would wear a suit. Well, that really makes me sad if you’re at the highest level of education in the Netherlands., you’re 15 years old, and the only thing you know about entrepreneurship is that probably an entrepreneur wears a suit. That is the first problem. 

And then Regulations is also important. But I think just making people aware of what entrepreneurship is and what’s good and what is nice about it, that’s the first step, I guess. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: Thank you very much. Because that’s one of the topics I hope you will come to is that the image of an entrepreneur is, well, God, we have only – we only want to earn money fast and exploiting their employees. No. We have to maybe all set up a mindset that, hey, no risk, no fun. Just do it. And that’s what you did. I really like that, your story. 

Maybe it’s a first time in the history of mankind that you could start a company out of your own room, a student room, with the investment of $500 Euro, a computer and fast Internet access, and be a global player within two ro three years. 

>> THIJL KLERKX: When I was 12 and I founded my first company, I didn’t have 500 Euros at all. It was way too much. I had my parents’ computer, so the investment can even be zero. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: And that’s a big chance for everyone. Maybe we should tell everyone get out. The Internet is not just a dark place, it’s something where it’s a chance for every one of us. 

Dirk, you’re an entrepreneur, too, and we are in an economic plenary here, so a lot of CEOs are sitting here. Well, do you – what do you see? You’ve been doing your business, dotBERLIN, for white a while and – quite a while and fighting for that top German for ten years, right? 

>> DIRK KRISCHENOWSKI: Yes. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: It took you ten years to come where you are right now. Is that something different that we have in Europe than in other areas? 

>> DIRK KRISCHENOWSKI: Yes. I thought when entering this panel I asked myself if such a discussion we have today would happen in the Silicon Valley. And I thought no, that would not happen in the Silicon Valley. The entrepreneurship just happens. The startups just happen. They don’t need to discuss or have panels or discuss about politics or something like this. They just do because they want to do. And the people have the can do attitude. And that’s different, and I think I can echo some of my colleagues on the panel and in Europe, that we are more careful to do things. And it’s harder to persuade investors, even private investors, to spend good money like in the US off startups, or even in the UK. 

And in preparation of the panel I asked some of my colleagues and other entrepreneurs: What is different here in Europe? Some of them were coming from the States here to Europe or other countries. And they said everything in Germany does take double the time at least. And that’s Germany, not, let’s say, other countries like Italy was really high bureaucracy. Double the time that you need in the U.S. It starts from the foundation of the company, hiring people or firing people, having the lawyers engaged in all these business processes takes so long-time. And Europe is quite interesting. 

And another thing I want to add, when it comes to Europe I really ask myself what is Euro? We have that Euro it’s a Schengen text, and the Schengen thing where you can just travel. But entering the UK or Denmark or Norway or whatever, everything is not the EU at the border. And so if it comes to text, and that is what the problem is that we had with our problem, we wanted to move for investment to another European company with our company, and the tax authority said okay, what is your revenue you are projecting for the next three years. And if you want to move to another country, let’s say the Netherlands or something like this, not a tax haven like the Caymen islands or whatever, just another European country, they said okay, you have to pay us three times the money you earn in one year, and then we let you found another company in another country if you go with your people and some IP rights and what you already have here. And that’s a big obstacle here in Europe, if you want to move with your company, transfer money, people know how and everything like this. 

It should have been fixed, and I think in the European Union there are some legislation which is on the way, but still not there to have this free movement like in the U.S., where you can move from California to New York and – with your people, with your money, with everything like this. These were learnings and key issues that we had here. 

Another thing, I think the governmental people left here, but in the beginning I think the worst mistake we made was with our Top Level Domain project. So we have invented or created our own name space for the City of Berlin, which is dotBERLIN. A new ending on the Internet. And the first thing we thought is okay, that’s a good idea. And the most beneficial work is the City of Berlin, in this case. We were going to the Government ten years ago, and asked them if they wanted to participate, if we made everything for them for free. It’s like creating a new Central Park in Berlin, let’s say, where the startup spends all the money and says we are running this for ten years cost free and it will be great for the whole city and people. And the first thing we got from the Government was an injunction at this time. 

So that was a hard experience. Maybe it’s a special case here, but it a little bit shows that even Governments are not really open to ideas. And if you ask them, I would never do this. I would just, in the next case, I just would do my business, ask not anybody in the Government, even if it’s something which is legally at the edge. And we have a lot of things which are legally at the edge. You see the Uber discussion with the taxi things here. But that’s quite interesting. 

So just do your things, if you want to found a company, and don’t ask too many other people on that. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: “Just do it” practice. I see we have a remark from our – one of our key participants. We have some key participants hidden in the audience. So Oliver, please. Yes, take the microphone. 

>> OLIVER GRUN: I’m Oliver Grun. It works. Thank you very much, Jimmy. My name is Oliver Grun. I’m from the Bundesverband IT. I’m a representative of the European One Organisation. But I’m not only any kind of representative, I’m also an entrepreneur. 

So regarding to the colleagues on the panel, I want to mention I’m very happy that we are talking about IT-SMEs and not only about the one, which are the startups, which are very important. And the other end the combines are also very important. But I think in the middle we have a lack. In the middle we have the IT-SMEs which are responsible in European for the majority of the IT jobs. I think we all know this. But – so they have to really, they have to play a key role with their innovations for the growth, for the economic growth in Europe. Because I think we are all – we all agree that we have a cross-sectorial issue with the IT, with the Internet. And I think you mentioned before some of the colleagues from the Government are leaving now. So I often have the problem that they do not understand the importance of the digital economy. 

So I think it is very important to see what we have. And we have the IT SME companies which will grow. So it’s easy to make a startup. And we are helping startups. But if you want to grow, you need capital. And this is a big problem here in European. We must make a kind of smart money culture, so combine capital, knowhow and network. Because capital is here, but we don’t combine it. And so we must solve this problem because I think we have a funding shortfall for growth capital. Not for funding companies, for funding capital. But for growth capital we have a shortfall. 

If you see I’ve also been in the Silicon Valley last year. Of course, in the famous trip, if you see that there is perhaps ten times more venture capital. This is one thing. But the second thing is if you want to grow in the USA, we have heard before, you have one big, big market with only dollars, with only English, with one culture. And if you want to grow in Europe you have 28 countries, cultures, tax systems, and so on. And so you need ten times more capital. But they have ten times more capital. 

So we have nearly no chance for big growth. And we have no consolidation, instruments or companies here in Germany. So all IT-SME companies, like my company, we have about 100 employees. At any time then there comes the American or other colleagues and say okay, no problem. I will buy your company. And we don’t have any consolidations. So we have to get a stock exchange 2.0. We have to think about something like this. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: Thank you very much, Oliver. And I agree that we have of course a different situation than in the U.S. because we are much more countries, more languages, different cultures in Europe. iAnd the different culture is not only that we have a different culture in how to do entrepreneurship, we have a different culture in surveillance. 

And of course there couldn’t be any panel at the EuroDIG without mentioning Edward Snowden. So maybe we should talk about that a little bit, how is the Snowden affecting small- and medium-sized companies in Europe? Are they afraid of what’s happening? Are they – well, completely disappointed? They lost trust. Not into the earth. I don’t think the Internet is broken. It’s not. But the people and companies lost trust into the States and that’s a big problem. 

So how are small- and medium-sized companies reacting to what Snowden told us? Miriam, you are advising small- and medium-sized startups and companies. What do they tell you? 

>> MIRIAM RUPP: Well, first of all, it’s a good thing that Snowden is there, so there is a huge – 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: And still alive. 

>> MIRIAM RUPP: So there is a long way to go. But I think the awareness is a very important step. I personally can only speculate about how it will affect companies and all sorts of levels. But what I see from the innovative companies that I work with is that is also a huge chance. Because topics like encryption services or putting your service in Europe, and nobody knows if that really helps, but it seems like a better or safer option, are often increasingly demanded. So small- and medium-sized companies and industries want to protect their data, their users’ data, their business secrets, and so they’re turning more and more – they’re not taking for granted that you just open up a Google mail account and work from there. But they think actively about how they can protect their information, their data, and what they can do also to protect their users’ information. And I think that’s something we just have to observe, if it actually works, because we don’t know where the NSA is going and what they can read and see. 

And as I said previously, I think what companies can also do when it comes to terms and agreements, the thing we all sign when we log on to a new service, that is very, very intransparent to the users, and to also strive for simplification on all kind of levels. To make it more transparent by using a language that the user actually understands when they click that “I agree to these terms” I’ve never read, actually. 

So those are the two things, you know, awareness for how I can protect my information. And there are a lot of tools out there that enable easier encryption of your data you can use here in Germany, Switzerland, whatever. And also the trend for what I could urge companies to do is to protect their users’ information and to make it easier for them to protect them. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: Just one more question. My impression was that some small- and medium-sized enterprises are so frustrated. I can’t protect myself. It’s so complicated. I can’t do it. I give it up. Well, I have nothing to hide so I ignore all the surveillance. Is that something that you see or do you see, okay, is there a movement “I’d like to protect myself. I want to do that? How can I do it?” 

>> MIRIAM RUPP: Yes. I think there are two sides and two different attitudes. But I believe that more and more companies want to protect their data. They just simply don’t know how to. And that’s where companies like the Deutsche Telekom can help, probably. And at least what I said previously, the awareness is there. And you’re also kind of depending on your service provider, on your host, on your e-mail provider, to introduce features and security services, even though you don’t know how to do it yourself. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: Yes. Well, of course, we’re coming to Deutsche Telekom right now. But obviously you want to tell us which services you are offering to help small- and medium-size enterprises. I know that. But that’s only one part of my question. The other part would be how are you protecting yourself? 

>> JAN KRANCKE: Okay. That’s definitely both interesting issues I would like to answer. And I totally agree to what you said. We have a higher awareness of security. We have a higher demand for security products and the barriers – in the various different fields. Maybe software, maybe in the network. And of course it’s a business for us as a company, but for others as well. So the demand for any kind of security services has definitely increased. 

Furthermore, what we as a company offer, others do the same. It’s a question really to give certainty to data storage, if we say that we install the data in Germany and not outside Germany. So this is what the market demands, at least some companies. 

I know that all of these measures will never be 100 percent certainty if the NSA is sitting in Frankfurt or whatsoever. I don’t know. But at least it increases security in this level. 

The other point you raised, what are we doing ourselves, we’re very active and have our own department, which is just controlling all our networks online every time, to ensure that we avoid any kind of illegal interceptions. What we do, for example, is our well-known honey pots. So what we develop is special honey pots we put in our networks. Where honey pots are to really sort of say attract attacks on our network in realtime to analyze and to find defensive measures. And, therefore, have early control of upcoming measures. And we have hundreds of thousands of attacks on these honey pots every day. So this is a very good analysis. And we are sharing our analysis with other companies, so we can increase at least efficient increase in security based on the new attacks arising. And we have our own cybersecurity centre who is monitoring this. And so this is definitely an issue where we increase the security. 

The other thing what we did is the emails that we use encryption for part of the e-mail delivery, as well. It’s increasing security. It will never be 100 percent but it’s helpful to set the hurdle higher for any kind of attack that you may see. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: Do you believe that the NSA, the GHCQ and others are reading your e-mail? 

>> JAN KRANCKE: Well, I’m personally not using a Google mail. I’m using German mail. I’m pretty confident that they are secure enough. But what the intelligence services of all countries worldwide do, I think nobody of us can have 100 percent certainty of what they are doing. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: Do you encrypt your mail? 

>> JAN KRANCKE: I personally for my private mail don’t do it.

>> One thing we have to thank Snowden for. Of course he showed us what the NSA is doing for our data, but for the smaller company, the NSA is quite a big enemy to fight. So I think the solution for that may be more a political one. But I do think that a lot of our small companies because of this have realized okay, our data is being – people are trying to hack up. People are trying to reach our data. Maybe they already are and we don’t see it. So I think that the fact that Snowden showed us what the US Government and other Governments are doing with our privacy, maybe it made us realise like ,okay, we cannot fight them, because we’re too small to do that. But we can at least make it harder for other companies and smaller enemies to attack our data. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: You’re right. I have another key participants. Thomas, the microphone is yours. 

>> THOMAS SCHAUF: I’m representing the station for digital economy. Also representing SMEs, and they are doing data driven businesses. And liked to also address a different, a second opinion on this surveillance debate. 

Also, in the discussions yesterday and also yesterday if you talk about the NSA and GCHQ practices on surveillance, then people also say oh, my God, digital businesses, people are combating them together and say supporting their things and we have to, yes, to do something against the spy practice also of other companies. And I’d like to make a comment on that. Public opinion, and maybe you should also address this, that to lump companies together with the surveillance is, in my personal view, wrong. And I would say some sort of negligent. Then it comes to politicians and Civil Society to say we must do something on a regulatory basis against those practices and then against those business models. 

And then if you talk about data protection and the European Union, then you say okay, then we have to implement something like user control and user’s consent and tick boxes. And then it leads to a situation with a third-party. And mainly digital companies are such third parties, and they would cut off the value string. And they would say they are not able to do any business anymore. And this means for Europe that most of 5,500 companies are affected. For Germany, this means that, roughly spoken, 460,000 might have a problem because their business would be on fire. Maybe this is another aspect that you can talk about. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: We have another key participant. Nadine. 

>> NADINE KARBACH: Hi. This is Nadine Karbach from the youth IGF Germany. What is your, the panel, view on competing with privacy? Is it a European chance? So this is picking up from the Twitter wall. But also maybe I can add one question too from the European Commission. I wonder if you can give young people in the room a concrete example of where they can hook up in the next few months, a place where they are encouraging young people to get involved and where they can get linked. Thank you. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: You need two minutes. We have more from the audience?

>> AUDIENCE: I’ve got a question for our young panelist, Thijl. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: They’re all young.

>> AUDIENCE: Sorry. Sorry. Anyway, so if I understand your message is that you want to engage young people in entrepreneurship. And that is a very good thing, of course. Even in Georgia we have all the startup bloom and young people are starting up their own businesses. But if you look closer at what they do, what are their businesses, it’s like they’re providing, offering services for window cleaning or painting, for example, or fixing your computers and stuff. So my question is, is that – yes, and for something bigger, they of course need a bigger investment. So you were talking about you can start up your business with zero investment, right? So that’s a little bit doubtful. So if you want to do something big, of course, you need much more money. 

So is it worth like dropping out of school for just doing business, like cleaning or offering services for window cleaning or something like that? Or maybe – so even you had problems with school, right? And maybe education first and then businesses? Like what about that? I mean, I of course have nothing against you having your business and sitting in a very cool suit there. 

>> THIJL KLERKX: Well, so I think it’s – basically, it’s two questions. Like how serious are the young entrepreneurs. And should you still prioritize school over or next to entrepreneurship? It’s a very good question. Maybe the young entrepreneurs are doing small businesses and they are not putting in all their time and money. But it’s a good thing. You have to see it as a learning curve. 

My first company,I started with zero Euro. I sold it for 500 Euros. I bought an iPad. I was the first one in my class with that. 

The second company I started with about 5,000 Euros from myself and a small investor. I see it now as a very small business. And now that I finished my school, it’s my moment to say okay, now it’s time to look for a bigger investment of about 200,000 Euros, and really take it to the next level. 

But I could not have done that without the experience of my first two companies. Because, well, I needed to learn a little bit about taxes and keeping your books up to date. But also about sales and lots of other things about, you know, trying to build a team. So I think that you’re much more successful in the future if you learn very young about how to start a business. And, of course, it’s very known and that’s the reason why we go to school when we’re young and not when we’re old, that the younger you are the easier it is to learn new things. And the same thing starts for entrepreneurship and the skills that you need to be an entrepreneur, a very wide range of skills. So it’s great to practice that when you’re young so you’ll become a better entrepreneur when you’re old. 

And by old I mean 25 or something.

(Laughter)

I always had a discussion about this, people say okay, you live on your own. You can pay your bills and rent. So why would you want to go to University? So I really want to go to University. That’s why I kept going to high school for the last eight years. Well, not always with a lot of joy. But I really think that, you know, I want to try to get the best of both worlds. So I’m learning a lot from the real world, but I want to learn from books and learn about what other people did and how they did it. Because in the end, I managed to start my own company. But if I look back and if I now start reading some books about the theory behind starting companies, I do realise that I’ve been reinventing the wheel, basically, a lot of times. Because I never heard of, you know, certain modems about sales or how to calculate whether it’s profitable to run a certain business or not. And now that I’m starting to learn a little more, I think okay, well, maybe it would have made me avoid a few mistakes if I learned this before. 

So I think education is very important. But yes, you shouldn’t be afraid to delay your high school or your University a few years to also get some real world practice. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: Thank you very much. I’d like to add, then it’s yours. In fact, I founded my first company to afford my studies, because no one else paid for it. It became so, well, successful that I delayed my studies, and I studied nine years but I finished it. Well, I studied political science and my father said if you do that, go be a cab driver. I didn’t do that. 

>> MIRIAM RUPP: And I just wanted to add, because this question opens up another topic. If you take a step back and look at education and the role of schools, as your question indicates, it’s school or real life. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: It’s and. 

>> MIRIAM RUPP: It’s wrong and we’re falling behind very fast when we continue like this already and in schools. Why don’t we integrate and embrace entrepreneurship, as Thijl said. There is so much you can learn by founding your own company, legal stuff, finances, all of a sudden math makes sense. And how you present stuff and how you sell. And so many things, how you lead people, and many, many more things. 

So I think there is something very wrong with our education system on the entrepreneurial level and also on other levels. I mentioned before, educating children how to protect themselves using the Internet, how to code so many things that are not dealt with until we become 18 and leave school, or if you don’t do it in our free time, which most people do anyways. So that leaves a big question about what the education system is doing to promote entrepreneurship and to prepare us for a digital lifetime. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: I think that’s one of those questions. Is that something in our educational system and in society that we don’t tell young people that there is an opportunity to be an entrepreneur? That they learn how to do it? Dirk, did you say that’s one of the options that I have in life, to be an entrepreneur? 

>> DIRK KRISCHENOWSKI: Yes. That’s a good question. I don’t think we need special lectures on entrepreneurship in schools. It’s just not for all people. Most people are not that such self motivated, such intrinsically motivated to found a company and have all the positive and negative things with them. They like to be, let’s say, stay at home, work as a taxi driver or whatever, do a job as architect or engineer or something like this. They are not entrepreneurs. When we are looking for new people in our company, which we’re doing right now, we as founders always think the people need to be like us. But a lot of people we are hiring, they are not like us. They are normal people who work in administration or marketing or things like that. And they don’t have a founders gene or something like this. 

But teaching in school that being an entrepreneur or owner or founder of a company – entrepreneurs always is connected with IT companies. I find this really terrible, because we have the green economy, we have the energy sector, and we have the food sector where a lot of things are developing and that are also entrepreneurs, which are doing great jobs. And no one talks about them. They are just doing their things. It’s quite interesting. 

So teaching at school that this is an alternative path you could go in your life, which is not straight, always, with ups and downs. And you may go bankrupt with your idea, but there’s a new start for people here. And that brings us to a culturist thing in Germany and in Europe. We don’t have at the moment this culture of failing with your company and standing up and founding a new company. 

Sometimes people which go bankrupt in Germany, they have to pay for seven years and can’t start a new business or something like this. It’s really hard if you go bankrupt here in Germany. You’re nearly out of the business for quite a time. And you have a stamp on your head which says he was bankrupt. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: Failed. 

>> DIRK KRISCHENOWSKI: Failed, or something like this. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: Thank you very much for mentioning that. Of course, there is a lack of a culture of failure not only in Germany but also in Europe. But it’s extremely hard in Germany. If you failed once, you will never – you never can do it again. And that’s completely different in, for example, the U.S. If you get up again, they say well, this guy has experience. 

But I have another question from the audience, please.

>> AUDIENCE: We see a lot of really interesting disruptive American companies in the EU. Like Uber, NB and B, Netflix, Facebook. And they are disrupting our societies and it’s interesting. But they are also giving away products for free or very cheap, because they can use data in another way than most European companies can. 

Do you believe in competing with privacy and is that a European chance? 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: Maybe you could react on that? It’s your turn anyway. You can answer the next question.

>> I was a bit confused about the young people. For which young people should I say something now, below 25 or people like us here. 

Actually, it’s just – you know, Europe is doing a lot, but Europe should not do things where Europe is not the best place to do certain things, and that covers, of course, also activities for young people. We are running quite a few programmes, and those who are interested in finding out about these can send me an e-mail or can contact me after the plenary here. I’m happy to give you some information about the Erasmus plus programme, which has a component here in Germany. It’s a multimillion programme. There is also a programme called Erasmus programme for entrepreneurs; it’s not been that successful in Germany. I heard that they are busy or their English is not good enough when I look at the statistics. But also the Commission, we are trying to shake up the educational systems in Member States because we can do that, because it’s the responsibility of the Member States, the education. 

And we say like well, there should be more digital skills, there should be awareness raising for people. But we have to raise the awareness that entrepreneurism is available for young people. And we talked about coding. Coding is just one example of digital skills altogether. There is an example in accounting. The EU code week, I hope you will all do your own event in your place or school or University and so on. 

And we have some multistakeholder platforms, such as the grand Polish for digital schools jocks. There are training opportunities. But I have two sons which are relatively young, so probably not the target group here in this room. They are 10 and 14 years old. I would tell them also don’t wait for Europe. Do things yourself. Because Europe is not something which is something takes place in offices in Brussels. Europe is all of us and we have to all take responsibility and we have to do something. Particularly, the tools that you have today via the Web give us lots of opportunities of doing things even outside any formal channels and so on. And I think we have to take these collective responsibilities as a young person to basically reboot Europe. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: You would like to – you mentioned you’d like to add something here? 

>> Just on the last question from the floor. I think there is some interesting issues regarding competition on data, data protection, and the question of how to compete vis-a-vis the other players which offer their service for free on a monetary basis but not for free on a data users. You pay with your personal data, you don’t pay cash. Of course, I’d like to comment on two issues raising from it. 

So one is on these kinds of competition, there is something of an imbalance. If you compete as a network player, it’s not company specific, but every network player in Europe – and you have good services like Skype – they, of course, are cannibalizing our core business. That is fair enough. That is competition. So nothing to complain about. 

The only question arising from it is in the political regulatory environment. Do we treat the services in the same way or not? And if we – if they are looking at the detail, of course for our voice service, we have to fulfill a lot of legal obligations. Other services like Skype, for example, don’t have to do that. So not to be misunderstood, I’m not demanding to raise the level of Regulation for these OTT services, but it’s a question of a level playing field. And that’s a core political decision to decide which kind of level security or legal obligations I have for a specific service, but this then has to be valid for every service in the same way. 

The question regarding data analytics, it’s always tricky with regard to data security. And we had a discussion yesterday in the breakout session where I assume some of you were present as well. It’s always a balance. On the one hand, data analytics is also necessary, also in Germany, and shouldn’t be treated as a negative per se, because data analysis is extremely helpful. But it has to be transparent for the customers which kind of data you’re using. I think this is a difference in the American compared to the European approach. In the American way, you’re just simply – you just have to accept all terms and conditions and allow any kind of data analytics. The European environment is more going the direction that you have to make transparent to the customer, so to say, implicit, opt in or out for using the data. 

Again, it’s a question of a level playing field between these companies. That’s of course relevant for the European players to be able to compete. 

The last point on the issue, compete on data protection. Yes and no. This is tricky. It’s tricky again because on the one hand you should serve and offer the services for increased data protection. And that’s what we do as a company. If any company doesn’t – it doesn’t matter which company – would say I’m offering the highest data standard, you can be sure that they are the first one for the next attack of hackers. So it’s a bit of ambivalence of how you stress it to say that we realise, I think, all of us, after the Snowden information we received, that you can never be 100 percent sure that nothing happens. So this is a possibly realistic environment in the arena. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: Thank you. Now we have queuing up audience at the microphones. You’re first.

>> AUDIENCE: It’s me again. 

But now I’ve got a question for our female panelist. So what I observed is that in the sphere of entrepreneurship there are fewer females than males. And I think that’s the fact. Correct me if I’m mistaken. 

So I remember we were discussing something eight months ago in Algeria. I was told about an idea of how a man wants to expand his business or something like this, and that was the thing for me to risk. And I told him hold on. Be careful and watch out. 

I don’t know. Maybe there are fewer females because doing business requires a lot of courage and you have to be risky. And maybe there are fewer females because we are less risky. I don’t know. I don’t want to believe in this. I want that to be just a stereotype. 

But I’d like to hear what you are thinking about as a female entrepreneur. Thank you. 

>> MIRIAM RUPP: I think this is a very long discussion, but to answer it briefly, of course there are statistics that prove your point. But what you also see especially in the entrepreneurial field, that more and more women are becoming role models, active role models, and there are more and more networks, the Wikicats in Berlin, new editorial concepts that promote entrepreneurship by women. I personally don’t really believe in the fact that we should talk about ourselves as women too much. But just, as you said previously, just do it. If I’m at a panel like this, I want to talk about the topic and the discussion, and not my role as a woman. And I think the more women just do what they want to do, and it’s a long journey from an old world last century to where we are now, the opportunities that we have now. 

But I think it will happen organically and naturally and it’s just a matter of time before this discussion becomes obsolete. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: I advise you to look at your home page. In her company only women are working and just one man. And he is the attorney. I like that very much. 

>> Coming back to the element of data protection for the UP and the singles market, just one funny short story I’d like to share and tell also at EuroDIG, we are deep in dialogue between industry, Civil Society and the policy arenas as necessary. Maybe you could remember the privacy directive, the so-called cookie law. The legal text was something like: Storing information on a computer’s device is only allowed if you, based on clear and transparent information, give his or her consent. So this means if you drop a cookie, you must use consent. 

What will happen then for those not in a position to get user consent as users not knowing them. So it’s easy to say it’s half website that I’m visiting, and then I trust because I know them. Or what can I do if I’d like to take a service, download an app, to get it I must accept the data protection things or the privacy policy?

And then what industry is doing, if it’s very difficult to store cookies anymore, they are looking for alternative technologies. And the funny thing is the Commission tried to force the ideas of transparency, users’ control and choice to say okay, if a cookie shall be dropped, the user should have a choice. And then the alternative for industry is using device imprinting, because that’s not storing information on a computer’s device. So just making another route and then if it fails, that users are not having transparent because they don’t have the information that fingerprinting is ongoing. So I think it’s an open invitation to us all, after the election of your Parliament, if you try to go and try to make more data protection Regulations, then it might be more relevant than it previously was. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: Thank you very much. Any reaction from the panel?

>> I think we have been talking a lot about privacy and data protection. And we can also have dialogues here. The key topic about this session is economics. I think what we see currently is, first, it’s a wakeup call for Berlin a bit. And it also shows that a legislation process in Europe is slow. Sometimes it has some advantages. But the data protection directive draft and so on, it’s taking years. And then it’s completely overtaken by ongoing and new developments and so on. Which also means that the European institution, including the Parliament and the Council and the Commission, we have to continue what we are doing so far, which is basically we have also to ask people who are very knowledgeable about what is going on and what they think about the proposals. Stakeholder dialogue in Brussels 20 years ago was you do something for the agriculture guys and sometimes they come with tractors to Brussels and smash the windows. But we have to change the approach nowadays. 

And when I say business opportunity, it’s opportunity when you look at the negative figures that we have today. I’m also in charge of the digital agenda scoreboard for Europe. Look, it’s a very interesting document. And some of the strictest things there is that only 14 percent of European SMEs are using the Internet to do promotion, to do sales. 14 percent of European SMEs. I think that’s a shame. And it’s partly also because we don’t have it right in terms of data protection and privacy. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: Thank you very much. We have another audience.

>> AUDIENCE: Yes, my name is Abahad Blaha (Phonetic) from Germany. I’m thankful for this question on cookies because I’ve been angry on this for about a year. A year ago somebody introduced a cookie directive, and since that time in Brussels I’ve been seeing pop ups on websites, do you agree to cookies? And I’m agreeing, because I think privacy is not about cookies. I think there are so many important issues in Internet governance, and if we’re talking about cookies we’re just wasting our time. 

But the reason I’m standing here actually is the question which the lady in front asked some ten minutes ago. I found it a very interesting question. And she said,: we have all these American companies, we have Facebook and others, we have all these competitors, basically, and they are threatening our European business model. And I don’t think I’ve heard an answer to their question so far. 

The guy from Deutsche Telekom he said that we need a level playing field. Now, with all due respect, this is rubbish. Because, first of all, when I go to use a T-Mobile hot spot or telecom hot spot in Germany, you’re blocking what’s up. So that is a good idea for you to block what’s up and me, not allowing me to use it when I use a telecom hot spot. But that’s not plain competition. So you’re showing in your own company that there never will be a level playing field. 

And also I think we have all the American companies and I think there will never be a level playing field. If you go to California, you ask Mark Zuckerberg to respect European privacy, and he will just laugh at you. There is no way for us to compete with Americans on the level of privacy. And there has been some studies in Germany, there is an Institute in Hamburg, they published a report a few months ago on uses, and young people in Germany and all of them say we don’t care about privacy. We use Facebook and what’s up. And my own son, he uses what’s up. And he doesn’t care if the NSA reads his messages to his friends. So who cares. And if we go down this road and say we need a level playing field, and we know it never will happen, we will lose the battle. The only answer for me is to drop privacy. Thank you. 

>> Just a direct answer to these issues. You can always take this position we don’t have any chance to compete. It is like it is. Yes, of course. Competition is dynamic and it’s changing dynamically. But the question we have here, and it’s I think a key part to debate is really what are our European values? What is our European history? What is our European goal in this digital environment? And if you say this is your position, I don’t care about European values, I take the American one, that is sufficient. Okay. That’s your opinion. But from a European perspective, we have one that is different from the American, and we have to take care of it that we don’t lose every routes that we have in Europe. And that’s a debate we have here and that’s the point that I raise in the issue of a level playing field. And this is, as I said, not only an issue of data protection or even only a very small part of data protection. It’s against everything that we have and how we build our business models. What kind of legal environment we want to have. What kind of user protection we want to have. And so on. 

And I don’t go into the political debate, which kind of protection level is right or wrong. That’s a political discussion. The only thing I say, if politics decides to have a certain level of standards, of security, of data protection whatsoever, this has to be valid for everyone operating in the European market. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: Thank you very much. 

Bertrand? 

>> BERTRAND de La CHAPELLE: Good morning. Actually, I’m happy that the discussion moves back to privacy. Because there was a question earlier on the Twitter wall which is: Can Europe compete via privacy in some way? I’m speaking here purely as a European citizen. Nothing to do with the activities I have or had before. 

I’m a little bit concerned that we’re not necessarily framing the topics in the right way and that we are potentially harming ourselves by the way we ask the questions. The protection of privacy, the protection of personal data, is a very important thing, as has been said, in Europe also for historic reasons. 

And speaking about France, one of the fundamental historic reasons is that there has been during the war deep misuse of data that was collected for other reasons. This is the fundamental foundation of the reason why collection of data is so regulated in Europe. Point one. 

The second thing is that we all know that in the future, it’s already the case, but in the future it is the combination of data through the data analysis but also through the combination of databases and APSs and so on that is going to create the most added value, both in social and economic value. It is obvious as well that the more data you have, the more you can make combinations and potentially create value. 

So we have this tension between the two orientations. On the one hand, trying to collect as little as possible because it might be misused. And on the other hand, knowing that the value and the economic growth is going to come from as much data as possible and as much combination of data as possible, to discover new ways to create value. 

If we begin to ask the problem this way, then the discussion on what Europe’s position is changes a little bit. Instead of having the current position, which I personally don’t agree with, which is that our data should not get out of Europe at any cost, we don’t care about the data of others, but we should have the minimum connection and the minimum data going out. Couldn’t we frame the debate in terms of what is the policy that will make European data Regulation so balanced that everybody in the world will want to bring its data not under European soil but under European like rule? But in order to do this, it cannot be based on the minimalization of collection. It’s not possible. It’s just like saying oil is the resource for the future. But the key to competition is to have as little oil as possible. This is not true. We need to regulate misuse of data, not the collection of data. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: Thank you, citizen Bertrand de La Chapelle. And I agree that the collection of data, of course, is not the problem, but the misuse and we have to regulate that. And as you mentioned, the Schengen Net is not the solution. 

The last voice from the audience, I think.

>> AUDIENCE: I’m honoured to be last. Martin Levy from Kalfer. I just got annoyed when I stood up here, because I’ve spent an awful lot of my time trying to build a better, faster, bigger Internet. Let me rewind. I have a British passport. I hold an American passport. So part of the discussion about a European versus – and I live in Silicon Valley, just to add insult to this conversation. 

The Internet is global. And I’ll put a full stop at the end of that statement. The phrase, when you talk about Schengen Net, delete it in any way you can. If I put my European side on, it’s an embarrassment to discuss that in any way, shape, manner or form, compared to the openness that western countries, that most countries, quite frankly, have. 

So think about entrepreneurialship, going back to a key point of the conversation. Think about using the Internet, think about it only in a global sense. Bertrand talked about privacy and just came up with a brilliant conversation about the difference. But I want to just close this comment by saying trying to build infrastructure to make the Internet better, to make it more usable and yet having to deal with, quite frankly, per country or per region rules that are just – just cause problems. They absolutely cause problems when trying to be delivering services, will stifle and stop the type of things that the Internet has the capability of being. 

So I just implore you guys to think about this. This goes well beyond any of the conversation that is discussed here. Think about it from the future. Think about the inevitable. Think about the build and think about changing this and removing any concept of country or region boundary in any way. Thank you. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: Oliver ,go ahead but be fast. 

>> OLIVER GRUN: The topic of this panel normally means how IT can foster growth. And I’m sitting here, we are always talking about Regulation and data privacy and so on. I just want to mention or I want to give a comment. I think we – we oversleep in Europe. We oversleep the first digital revolution with search engines, with social networks, we just oversleep. But now here comes the second digital revolution, and the second one goes into the business process, and this is the core of our business here in Europe ,and I think we must do anything against this. And that’s what I was awaiting from this plenary. Thank you. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: Thank you, Oliver. And I totally agree that of course every panel I’m on for the last couple of years dealing with Internet, business, small- and medium-sized enterprises, we have been always talking about the dark side of the Internet and not about the chances we have. 

But I think we have proven, you’ve proven that there are more chances than there are threats on the Internet, and we should take these chances and go out and tell everyone, hey, go out and just do it. 

But the last round here on the plenary. Everyone has one sentence – 140 characters to say. 

>> MIRIAM RUPP: Just shortly. My point of view is less regulation. More education to our users, companies and entrepreneurs and to equal players compared to American or Asia players.

>> The Internet is definitely global and we don’t need restrictions on a local basis. But I think the key point, and this is what EuroDIG, ICANN and all the International associations are doing, is a dialogue on finding a global governance which is taking care of all the issues put on the table here. 

And the last point, regarding ICT policies and the environment, indeed we haven’t discussed this deeply. I made four proposals. Unfortunately, no response on these issues. But I think we do have proposals on the table, what can be done on the political level.

>> Yes, I think that when we talk about young entrepreneurship, because I think that’s the main reason I’m here, I hope we can get more attention for it at schools. I agree with what you said, not everyone has to be an entrepreneur. It’s not for everybody. But we have to know that it’s an option and we should make our own decision knowing that entrepreneurship is one of our options and it’s an option for everyone if you have the motivation. 

And about privacy, I really agree with, I think, Mr. Bertrand de La Chapelle. It’s nice to have the Twitter wall to see his name. But we agree, when it’s about Regulation and privacy, I think privacy is important. But we shouldn’t just stop collecting data because of that. I don’t think that – there has to be a fight between collecting mounds of data and privacy. I think it’s more about how you do it, who gets the data and who is in charge and what happens to the data, to make sure that our privacy is safeguarded. 

So we need to find a way to make the user in control of his own data. And he can decide who gets the data and for what period of time and what to do with it. So the data is safe, but we can use it to make lives better.

>> I have two takes. One is to be competitive with other global markets, in Asia or the Americas. Europe needs to be really a union with all the countries having the same currency, the same legal basis, and free movement of people and capital in Europe, in all angles of Europe. Otherwise, it doesn’t work. It’s a system – the system we have now, it doesn’t really work. 

And the other take is simple privacy and security have become an important to-do for all CEOs and entrepreneurs. It should be written in their mindsets. That has changed over the last time and with Snowden especially. 

>> A little wake-up call, it might sound a bit pathetic, but I think we have great assets in Europe but we are under exploiting them. We have great talent. Relatively good education systems. Let’s make them more modern and change the curricula, that’s what we need to do. Let’s speed up things in terms of Regulation and working together. Let’s tear down the barriers and let’s reboot Europe. 

>> JIMMY SCHULZ: So thank you very much all of you for one and a half hours of interesting discussion. There will be more. We are going to have some breakout sessions after half an hour break. Here in this room, as I understand. We have planned right at the moment, maybe you can show them on the beamier, we planned three breakout sessions. One is moderated by you, Dirk, and one by you, Thomas. And so these groups will meet in this room in the corner, sit together and discuss more the issues we have been just passing by, the last discussion. 

And I’ll hand over the microphone to Wolf. 

>> WOLF LUDWIG: Thank you very much. Thanks, Jimmy. As Jimmy just announced, first a hand for Jimmy and his panelists.

(Applause)

But as Jimmy said, it’s not yet over. You will have an opportunity after the coffee break outside now in half an hour to come back and to continue with a breakout session on plenary 4 follow-up. In parallel of the breakout sessions, there will be the other track of the workshops. And the workshops will take place in the same rooms over there like we had the first four yesterday. We will today continue after the coffee break with workshop 5 to 8. So please, I think all of you know the priority for the workshop or the breakout session you would like to see. Try to be in time thereafter the coffee break. 

Thanks a lot.

(Applause)

== Preparatory meetings == 

* 2014-05-06 14:30 - 17:30 Berlin LOAD HQ
* 2014-05-07 15:00 - 18:30 Berlin LOAD HQ
* 2014-05-09 15:00 - 16:00 Telco Focal Team
* 2014-05-13 16:00 - 17:00 Telco Focal Team
* 2014-05-14 09:30 - 10:00 Telco Linda & Dirk
* 2014-06-02 16:00 - 16:30 Telco Focal Team
* 2014-06-03 16:00 - 16:30 Telco Focal Team

== Pictures from working group == 

Link

== Session twitter hashtag == 

Hashtag: #eurodig_pl4


[[Category:2014]][[Category:Sessions 2014]][[Category:Sessions]]