Aoife White

You see that with the trade unions coming in and they do have a say in politics.

how European policy gets discussed.

Do you see those views maybe filtering through more in Europe than they do in the US?

I mean, they're not absent in the US, but they're not dominant and they don't really maybe influence the politics as easily.

as to who who is backing the right horse here i mean it's it's a common question that there's too many too much red tape there's too many rules it's difficult to start a business it's hard to do things i would say it's definitely hard to start a small business in one european country and expect to roll that out across the eu i mean we know that it's it's hard to you've got different tax systems you've got local rules on all kinds of things and that's very painful and that's definitely true um

On the bigger question, does it hold back growth?

I mean, I think the biggest problem is really lack of capital, lack of venture capital.

I mean, if you're a small company and you really want to grow, you're not going to find that kind of environment in Europe.

I mean, the Silicon Valley venture capitalists coming at you with lots of cash and lots of help.

I mean, that's something that's been quite engineered here.

Yes, and that's being talked about.

This is part of this whole idea of how do you unlock that saving, particularly pension funds?

How do you invest that back into the economy?

And the US is much, much better at that.

And I think that's maybe one of the tragic things of Europe, that it is sitting on money and that it isn't being used as productively as it could be.

And that should definitely be something that should happen and could really help.

So is regulation the magic wand?

And does the current deregulation

thing that the EU has going on, is that going to make a huge difference?

It's not going to turn us into Silicon Valley tomorrow, no.