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Wikimedia Europe

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

Stefan Krause, Germany, FAL, via Wikimedia Commons

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

JohnDarrochNZ, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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

Sergey Pesterev / Wikimedia Commons

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

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

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European Democracy Shield: we shared our views with the Commission 

George E. Koronaios, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Democracy is one of the fundamental values of the EU and today, as never before, it needs to be preserved and nurtured. Wikimedia Europe welcomes the European Commission’s initiative to adopt a European Democracy Shield to uphold the Union’s founding values.

We are convinced that Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects have a great role to play in the everyday efforts to nurture European democracy and to make the digital information ecosystem more resilient. We explained how in our submission to the public consultation launched by the European Commission. 

Our submission

When drafting our submission to the public consultation, we focused our attention on four main aspects. First, we explained how the application of the “Wikipedia Test” can help to defend and promote the fundamental right to freedom of expression and information in the online sphere. Second, we clarified the importance of recognising and promoting the Wikimedia projects’ and volunteer communities’ efforts to strengthen digital and media literacy skills and safeguard the integrity of the online information ecosystem. Third, we explained why the public interest contributions of Wikimedia volunteer editors need protection from strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs). Fourth and lastly, we highlighted the importance of promoting human-centered artificial intelligence (AI), and making sure that the digital commons—including Wikipedia and other reliable sources of openly licensed journalism and research—used to train large language models (LLMs) are protected and that these sources receive proper attribution.

conclusion

The protection of European democracy goes hand in hand with an effective protection of free and open knowledge projects such as Wikipedia, which are governed by a community of volunteers who are exclusively driven by the goal of serving the public interest in Europe, and beyond.