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Wikimedia Europe

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Stefan Krause, Germany, FAL, via Wikimedia Commons

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center from Greenbelt, MD, USA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

JohnDarrochNZ, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Markus Trienke, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Sergey Pesterev / Wikimedia Commons

Benh LIEU SONG (Flickr), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Michael S Adler, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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We are Wikimedians working on EU policy to foster
free knowledge, access to information and freedom of expression.

ABOUT US
KNOWLEDGE EQUITY
FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY LAB

DEM-Debate project: the Critical Legal Analysis

Craiyon, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The latest deliverable of the DEM-Debate project authored by the University of Amsterdam explores how the new EU legal framework on election disinformation applies to Wikipedia. The legal analysis evaluates, through critical lenses, the impact of the new rules on the functioning of community-governed platforms in addressing disinformation related to the 2024 European Parliament elections, drawing some preliminary conclusions on how to inform policy making: Wikipedia editorial rules together with its patrolling system are good examples from which future legislation on election disinformation can draw inspiration.

Read More »DEM-Debate project: the Critical Legal Analysis

WMEU on the Digital Omnibus & the Russmedia Decision

An omnibus of the Compagnie générale des omnibus. Scanned by Claude Shoshany, Collection personnelle, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1376037

On 19 November 2025, the European Commission unveiled its Digital Omnibus package — a pair of legislative proposals aimed at simplifying the EU’s digital regulatory framework. The first one is focused specifically on AI, while the second covers data protection and re-use of open data.   

The Commission frames these changes as efforts to streamline complex EU rules. However, civil society groups, many MEPs, and even some Member States argue that they fundamentally alter the EU’s digital rulebook by weakening longstanding data protection principles. 

The Wikimedia movement is made up of its organisations, projects and users. They all depend on robust privacy protections, open knowledge sharing, and solid intermediary liability protections. At the same time, the Wikimedia Foundation, as a service provider, also spends considerable resources on sometimes very complex compliance work in the EU.

With all this in mind it is needless to say that these proposals raise significant questions for Wikimedia. We can identify both positive and negative changes in the published texts. 

Read More »WMEU on the Digital Omnibus & the Russmedia Decision

Open letter: Harnessing open source AI to advance digital sovereignty

November 13, 2025 Dear Presdent Macron,Dear Chancellor Merz,Dear President von der Leyen, Europe is at a crossroads. The Summit on European Digital Sovereignty marks an important milestone for the EU and its member states in aligning on a shared strategy for achieving real and lasting European digital sovereignty. As the EU pursues the goal of digital sovereignty, we urge you to harness open source — that is, technology that is free to use, inspect, adapt, and share — as a key enabler of this strategy.  Europe cannot buy sovereignty off a shelf, it has to build it. In an age of geopolitical volatility and rapid innovation Europe must play to its strengths, including world-leading researchers and a rich history of open source development. It faces a choice: use these strengths to carve out its distinct place in the global AI ecosystem or settle for copying the playbooks of already dominant actors.  At their heart, closed systems create dependency, open systems create capacity. Investment into the full open source AI stack, from AI models to data and software tooling, is a strategic lever. If digital sovereignty means creating a Europe that is resilient and benefits from choice, security, and self-determination, then open source is a critical force multiplier that enables Europe to do more with less.  Open source AI, and open source technology more broadly, is not just a strategic asset benefiting governments, businesses, and people. If underpinned by a clear commitment to values that are at the heart of the European project — including cultural diversity, fundamental rights, environmental sustainability, and people’s privacy and security — open source can help embed these into the technologies that will shape our future.  We, the undersigned, represent a diverse coalition of organisations across industry, the open source community,… Read More »Open letter: Harnessing open source AI to advance digital sovereignty

Wikipedia & AI Competition: Biases, Mistakes, Omissions

A model to predict pixel colour values, based on an original photograph. The work illustrates a popular type of machine learning model: the decision tree. Decision trees work by splitting the data into ever smaller segments. It shows that models are simplifications of reality, but can still be useful. Authors: Rens Dimmendaal and David Clode, License: CC-BY, Source: BBC, Better Images of AI

Competition is a good thing. Wikipedia’s free licences explicitly welcome it. We have seen other platforms and encyclopaedias appear in the past, and we will see more in the future. 

The latest batch of competition that wants to harness AI technology to generate better compendiums of knowledge. These projects criticise things like gaps in coverage, reliable or alleged political biases. Let’s have a look at what’s out there and discuss some of the aspects!

Read More »Wikipedia & AI Competition: Biases, Mistakes, Omissions

Wikipedia Is Running On Its Own Metal: The Power and Limits of Self-Hosted Infrastructure

These are the data centres used by the Wikimedia Foundation, in which it has colocation space and where it operates its server clusters.

The recent AWS outage served as yet another reminder of how much of the modern internet depends on a handful of cloud providers. When the service experienced widespread disruptions in October 2025, countless websites and applications went dark. The cascading failures illustrated a drawback of the cloud-dependent infrastructure.

Luckily, Wikipedia and its sister projects hummed along without interruption. It is a little known fact that the Wikimedia Foundation runs its own servers in several places around the world. This has some advantages, but also poses specific challenges. Let’s take a look!

Read More »Wikipedia Is Running On Its Own Metal: The Power and Limits of Self-Hosted Infrastructure

Why Wikimedia Supports Secondary Publication Rights for Publicly Funded Research

Main Library of the University of Vienna. Reading hall. Author: Hubertl. License: CC-BY-SA, via Wikimedia Commons

Through its flagship research programme, Horizon Europe, the European Union will spend 95.5 billion euro on science and research until 2027. Yet, the results of this research in many cases will not be accessible to Europeans – academics, regular citizens or even Wikipedians.

In he most extreme cases European taxpayers will have paid for the research institution, for the actual research, but the research institutions and the researchers will still need to pay expensive licenses for academic journals for access. And even then, the public won’t be able to make use of this knowledge.

Read More »Why Wikimedia Supports Secondary Publication Rights for Publicly Funded Research

Protecting and Empowering Children Online: A Wikimedia Perspective

Yoruba Wikipedia Children's Day Celebration Souvenir /cc-by-sa Agbalagba, via Wikimedia Commons

We understand the concern and are concerned ourselves. Lawmakers worldwide are rightly focused on the effects personal data collecting, algorithm-and-advertising-driven, content pushing platforms have on growing up. Protecting and empowering minors—both online and offline—requires ongoing effort, cooperation, and commitment from the entire society.

The EU has already enacted important legislation, including the Digital Services Act (DSA), the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD), and the Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA). These provide a solid framework for safeguarding children’s rights online, but of course could also be in need of updating. Currently several own-initiative reports by the European Parliament, Member States initiatives and the European Commission are considering options.

As such legislation is developed, we need to follow one guiding light: children’s rights and best interest. The challenge is clear: children deserve protection, and we have an obligation to protect them. Yet children also have other rights: to education, to privacy, and to freedom of expression. We must make sure all of these are protected.

Read More »Protecting and Empowering Children Online: A Wikimedia Perspective

Wikipedia’s Fight Against Election Disinformation: A New research paper looks into Community Governance

Screenshot of Wikipedia's "Recent Changes" feed.

As elections across the EU face growing threats from disinformation, Wikipedia stands out as a unique case study in how community-governed platforms work to safeguard information integrity. A new mapping report, part of the DEM-Debate project, explores Wikipedia’s policies and risk-mitigation strategies for combating election disinformation

Read More »Wikipedia’s Fight Against Election Disinformation: A New research paper looks into Community Governance

“AI for Youth, by Youth”: Why Young People Must Shape the Future of AI Governance

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Panel on AI for Youth, AI by Youth, UNESCO Global Forum on the Ethics of AI, Bangkok. Author: James Wright. License: Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

What happens when students are told for years that “Wikipedia does not count as a source” only to then be handed generative AI tools without question? The result is confusion and a missed opportunity to critically shape our digital futures.

Author: Sophia Longwe, Project Manager Policy, Wikimedia Deutschland

At the third UNESCO Global Forum on the Ethics of AI in Bangkok, Sophia Longwe from Wikimedia Deutschland had the opportunity to speak on the panel “AI for Youth, AI by Youth.” Speakers were from Bangladesh, Namibia, Mexico, Japan, the United Kingdom or Germany, and it was clear to everyone that AI is already transforming how we learn, work, and participate in society. And yet, young people are rarely invited to shape how these technologies are governed. Here is her report.

Read More »“AI for Youth, by Youth”: Why Young People Must Shape the Future of AI Governance

EU Anti-SLAPP Directive: It is time for national governments to act in favor of the public interest!

Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

SLAPPs are “strategic lawsuits against public participation”: legal cases brought to the courts in order to threaten and/or silence journalists, activists, and academics, including Wikipedia volunteer contributors. This legal phenomenon risks causing a chilling effect, which may be particularly acute in the case of those people who contribute voluntarily to Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects.

Read More »EU Anti-SLAPP Directive: It is time for national governments to act in favor of the public interest!