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BEREC meets to decide the fate of Net Neutrality in Europe

Web Foundation · August 25, 2016

On Thursday, members of the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC), met in Brussels to debate and finalise guidelines on net neutrality for national regulators across Europe. These guidelines – which will be released on Tuesday 30 August – will end a process which has unfolded over recent years. The #SaveTheInternet campaign succeeded in getting strong net neutrality laws passed by the European parliament, but many expressed concern that the laws left some potential loopholes open. Over 500,000 people wrote to BEREC last month asking them to issue tough, fair guidelines that close these loopholes. In these final days we need to make sure that BEREC knows we are watching closely. You can help by tweeting to let them know that you support strong net neutrality protections.

In support of the #SaveTheInternet campaign, our founder Sir Tim Berners-Lee (along with Professor Barbara van Schewick and Professor Larry Lessig), signed an open letter highlighting key areas that BEREC needs to address to secure meaningful net neutrality in Europe.

With this outpouring of support for net neutrality from European citizens, we’re cautiously optimistic that BEREC will produce the strong rules necessary to ensure true net neutrality is protected. However, we also know that some companies have been lobbying hard for weak guidelines that would benefit their own business over the public interest, so the battle is far from over.

The final guidelines will be made public on August 30th at a BEREC press conference. The public is invited to submit questions to speakers to press@berec.europa.eu or on Twitter using #BERECpublic or #BERECNN, and if you’re in Brussels, you can also sign up to attend in person.

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