The Netherlands: International businesses create more than 125.000 jobs in the Netherlands - by Mina Solanki

The Netherlands, not only tulips, also great professional jobs

If you are working in the Netherlands, your job may have directly or indirectly been made available by an international business.

In 2017, according to figures from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy, 357 international businesses collectively invested more than 1,67 billion euros in the Dutch economy, creating 12.686 jobs in the Netherlands.

Minister of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy, Eric Wiebes, is pleased with the figures from last year, as these show that the Netherlands is profiting from its favourable investment climate. In saying, “1,4 million Dutch people have a job, be it directly or indirectly, thanks to these businesses”, Wiebes expressed the importance of international companies for the Netherlands.

Read more: International businesses create more than 125.000 jobs in the Netherlands

INSURE-DIGEST joins the Europe House Digest family of publications

A recent survey showed that in the EU, where there are some 40 different languages and dialects spoken, 51% of the population now mainly communicate in the English language. This number is expected to increase every year.

This not only is happening in Europe, but all over the world, as it turns into a global market place with people, traveling more frequently, English is certainly becoming the “Lingua Franca”.

Europe House which saw this trend coming already many years ago decided to capitalize on it by using English in all it's promotional communications and informative publications.

In this context,  Europe House initially created three electronic publications in blog format.

These publications focus on specific issues, based on collected news items, surveys and reports, which are not always available in the corporate controlled traditional press, and sometimes even withheld from the public.

The publications are the one you are reading now, EU-Digest, launched in 2004 -The other

Turkish-Digest, with news about the political, economic and social scene in Turkey, launched in 2005, and in 2014 Almere-Digest was published to meet the demand of a large number of English speaking residents in Almere - which is considered one of Europe's most modern and ethnically divers cities.

This month the Europe House “Digest family” was again expanded with the launching of INSURE -DIGEST, mainly to comply with the request expressed by a large number of executives from foreign corporations establishing subsidiaries or headquarters in Europe and other countries around the world. Specifically, for better information and guidance, when selecting a new corporate subsidiary location. With the focus on potential pitfalls or advantages re: political stability, local taxes, insurance, health-care and schooling.

For advertising rates in any of our four publications go to the rate-insert in these publications.

EU-Digest 

Spying is bad for business: NSA spying caused 9 percent of foreign firms to dump U.S. clouds - by Mike Wheatley

In the weeks following Edward Snowden’s revelations of the NSA’s massive web surveillance program PRISM, speculation was raised about the negative implications it could have on U.S. cloud companies.

Now, Forrester Research has taken the time to see just what kind of impact it has had, asking a host of foreign firms whether or not PRISM has caused them to scale back their spending on U.S. cloud services, and the answer makes for some uneasy reading.

A total of 1,668 non-U.S. business technology decision makers were quizzed in Forrester’s survey. The exact question asked was “In the past year, has your company explicitly halted or reduced your spending with US-based companies for Internet-based services (e.g., cloud, online service/outsourcing) due to these security concerns?”, with 26 percent of respondents answering in the affirmative.

Forrester followed up by asking the 427 who said yes what their reasons for doing so were, and found that 34 percent cited “fear of the intelligence community spying”. A quick sum of the math shows that 9 percent of foreign firms have therefore ditched U.S. cloud companies due to the NSA, not an insignificant number by any means, despite The Register’s insistence that “Snowden didn’t scare off many”.

It’s worth nothing that the respondents held, on average, only about a third of their company data in U.S. clouds anyway, so their decision to pull out may not be as significant as it first seems. But even so, U.S. cloud firms will still want to take notice of the survey, which indicates that most foreign companies simply don’t trust them all that much anyway, irrespective of the NSA. In total, 53 percent of respondents said they would not trust any of their critical data with a U.S. cloud company, end of story.

Read more: NSA spying caused 9 percent of foreign firms to dump U.S. clouds | SiliconANGLE