Wikimedia Europe
| Wikimedia Europe | |
|---|---|
 | |
 Members of Wikimedia Europe | |
| Location | Brussels, Belgium & remote |
| Affiliate code | WMEU |
| Country code | EU |
| Legal status | Association internationale sans but lucratif (AISBL) |
| Founding date | January 13, 2023 – formal recognition |
| Main office | Brussels-Capital Region |
| Membership | 31 (Members of Wikimedia Europe) |
| Staff | 5 |
| President | Claudia Garád |
| Secretary | Alek Tarkowski |
| Treasurer | Capucine-Marin Dubroca-Voisin |
| Board members |
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| Key people |
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| Incorporation paper | Statutes |
| Budget | 800,000 EUR (2025) |
| Mailing list | updates wikimedia-europe eu |
Wikimedia Europe is established for the purpose of providing a shared legal entity for and common platform of the Wikimedia organisations in Europe, and is part of the worldwide Wikimedia Movement.
Our main objectives are to:
- foster collaboration between European Wikimedians to thereby advance access to knowledge in Europe,
- provide a public voice advocating a public interest internet, and
- strive for freedom and fundamental rights in the digital era.
Wikimedia Europe or WMEU is an international non-profit association (association internationale sans but lucratif – aisbl) founded in 2023 according to Belgian law and seated in Brussels.
Strategy renewal
[edit]At the General Assembly in Prague 2025, members came together to reflect on values, explore priorities, and offer input into the direction of our 2030 strategy. Based on outcomes of the meeting and other contributions still being gathered, strategy drafts will be developed and later consolidated in 2025. Further details and updates will be shared regularly with members via Wikimedia Europe Updates mailing list and on this meta page.
Advocacy
[edit]The EU Policy initiative aims at coordinating the European Wikimedia chapters so they can have a unified and clear position on major legislative and political changes affecting the vision, mission and values of the Wikimedia movement.
What legislative files are we working on?
[edit]In 2026 our main areas of engagement are:
- Child protection & age verification: Explaining how the Wikimedia communities and the Wikimedia Foundation are working together to protect children on the projects and participating in the discussions about which online platforms should preform mandatory age verification. Our position is that age verification would act as an additional barrier to accessing knowledge and should therefore only be mandated for the highest risk platforms.
- Content moderation: A large part of our work is to follow up on all the legislative conversations and proposals that touch upon how content moderation is performed, by users and by service providers. The main framework for this is the Digital Services Act. Here we are supporting the Wikimedia Foundation, including by providing input to the various guidelines the European Commission is issuing.
- AI: We are currently part of a lot of discussions and consultation related to AI and our projects. This includes copyright, attribution and citations, usage of tools for content moderation and generation, usage of Wikimedia content for training, infrastructure and the economics of the knowledge ecosystem. Our challenge for 2025 is to pull all these loose threads in a coherent strategy and message.
- Simplification vs. Deregulation: We participate in the debates on the EU on how to streamline the various EU rulebooks. This includes data governance, data protection, reporting mechanism, liability regimes.
- Protecting Our Users: Wikimedia users need to be protected. Their ability to edit is being regularly risked by unwise legal proposals, such as an obligation to use real names online. Another risky factor is our users being taken to court based on various laws, such as content moderation and data protection rules. We look at this aspect whenever we are working on these files.
- Geoblocking: The European Union is expected to revamp its geoblocking rules. We are part of the deliberations taking the position that geoblocking is often a hurdle to accessing and verifying sources, which are essential for citations on the projects.
We publish a monthly Monitoring Report on Meta and on the public policy mailing list (publicpolicylistswikimediaorg). It provides updates on all these topics and more.
Reports and Plans
[edit]Annual Reports and Plans
[edit]| Activity reports | Financial reports | Annual budget plans | Annual work plans |
|---|---|---|---|
General Assembly Reports
[edit]The General Assembly (GA) is the highest governing body in the organisation and is composed of member organisations with voting rights.
The GA meets once a year in Prague and once online.
| Year | GA Report |
|---|---|
| 2025 |
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| 2024 |
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| 2023 |
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