Wikimedia Europe
WMEU
Wikimedia Europe is a non-profit organization coordinating European chapters to advocate for free knowledge.
Lobbying Activity
Meeting with Danilo Della Valle (Member of the European Parliament)
6 Nov 2025 · Meeting with Wikimedia Europe
Meeting with Sandro Ruotolo (Member of the European Parliament, Rapporteur)
4 Nov 2025 · Position on draft INI
Meeting with Ilhan Kyuchyuk (Member of the European Parliament) and FIPRA International SRL
2 Jul 2025 · Omnibus 1 package & simplification efforts
Meeting with Maria Zafra Saura (Cabinet of Commissioner Michael McGrath), Maria Zafra Saura (Cabinet of Commissioner Michael McGrath)
28 May 2025 · Data protection, simplification
Response to European Democracy Shield
26 May 2025
Wikimedia Europe (WMEU) is a Brussels-based nonprofit organization that: 1) advocates the public policy interests of people in Europe who contribute as volunteers to Wikipedia and other volunteer-run Wikimedia projects, and 2) serves and coordinates the public policy advocacy activities for Wikimedia movement affiliate organizations across Europe. We welcome the European Commissions initiative to provide the European Union (EU) with a Democracy Shield to uphold its founding values, such as freedom, respect for fundamental human rights, including freedom of expression and information, the rule of law, and democracy. In this context, WMEU would like to highlight four key ways that supporting and protecting Wikimedia communities and projects can help the European Democracy Shield protect and advance democracy in the digital sphere: First, by defending and promoting the fundamental right to freedom of expression and information; Second, by recognising and promoting Wikimedia projects' and volunteer communities role in the safeguarding the online information ecosystems integrity and strengthening users digital and media literacy skills; Third, by enacting and enforcing anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participation) protections for public interest platforms in addition to journalists and activists; and, Fourth, by promoting and advancing human-centered, public interest AI (artificial intelligence).
Read full responseMeeting with Thomas Schmitz (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen)
6 May 2025 · EUDS
Meeting with Mario Furore (Member of the European Parliament)
25 Mar 2025 · Incontro conoscitivo
Meeting with Werner Stengg (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen)
18 Mar 2025 · Digital policy
Wikimedia Europe urges ending geo-blocking for publicly funded content
10 Mar 2025
Message — Wikimedia Europe calls for extending the regulation to include audiovisual services and copyrighted works. They argue that content receiving public funding should be made as freely available as possible.12
Why — Removing barriers allows the organization to better fulfill its mission of promoting free knowledge.3
Impact — Dominant media companies lose their market advantage over smaller independent producers.4
Meeting with Egelyn Braun (Cabinet of Commissioner Michael McGrath), Simona Constantin (Cabinet of Commissioner Michael McGrath)
6 Mar 2025 · Exchange of views on the Democracy Shield and the Digital Fairness Act
Meeting with Stefano Cavedagna (Member of the European Parliament)
5 Mar 2025 · Introductory meeting
Meeting with Birgit Sippel (Member of the European Parliament)
30 Sept 2024 · policy priorities for the new mandate (staff-level)
Meeting with Birgit Sippel (Member of the European Parliament)
12 Sept 2024 · Disinformation related to EU elections
Meeting with Daniel Braun (Cabinet of Vice-President Věra Jourová), Wojtek Talko (Cabinet of Vice-President Věra Jourová)
23 May 2024 · elections, disinformation
Meeting with Simona Constantin (Cabinet of Vice-President Věra Jourová) and European Federation of Journalists and
16 May 2024 · anti-SLAPP
Meeting with Alexandra Geese (Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur)
12 May 2023 · Political Advertising
Response to Virtual worlds, such as metaverse
2 May 2023
While dreaming of the future iteration of immersive technologies, the EU legislators seem to miss that what is truly needed is the digital public sphere that would serve Europeans regardless of what technology they use to connect with each other or how immersive the user experience is. Besides solving the problems and fulfilling the wishlist enumerated in our feedback, there is a need for a concerted policy that would aim at extracting Europeans from the necessity to use privatised spaces to access and take part in online public debates and indeed the market. A policy and legislation that binds together public stakeholders, the digital commons, and the necessary resources to store our data under the protection of the EU jurisdictions into a sovereign package is badly needed. It cannot be dictated by the experimentation of early movers to provide real opportunities to transform the internet into a better place and a more rewarding experience. Please see the attached document with the full feedback by Wikimedia Europe.
Read full responseWikimedia Europe urges EU investment in public digital infrastructure
28 Feb 2023
Topic — The European Commission is seeking strategic foresight to achieve sustainability goals by 2050.
Message — Wikimedia Europe calls for support for a publicly owned online public sphere. They argue Europe needs to invest in digital commons and community-governed social spaces.12
Why — Public digital infrastructure would provide tools for authentic citizen involvement in policy debates.3
Impact — Large social media companies face threats to their private control over public discourse.4
Wikimedia Europe urges expansion of reusable high-value public datasets
16 Jun 2022
Message — They demand that all datasets financed by EU funds be categorized for reuse. The group also proposes including company ownership, procurement, and justice data as high-value.12
Why — This would allow the organization to integrate vast amounts of public information.3
Impact — Publicly-owned enterprises would face increased transparency requirements regarding their granular spending records.4
Wikimedia Europe proposes opt-in system for database protection
10 May 2022
Message — Wikimedia proposes granting database protection only when producers expressly reserve rights. They advocate for machine-readable markers to indicate when data is not free for reuse.12
Why — This change would facilitate free information sharing and resolve licensing conflicts.3
Impact — Database producers lose automatic legal control over facts and non-original data.4
Response to EU Competition law – revision of the market definition notice
15 Feb 2022
Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU welcomes the initiative by the European Commission to update the Market Definition Notice. As stated previously in the feedback to the Roadmap on the subject, it is much needed to verify if its instruments are adequate for the digital sphere/markets. There is a need to better include platforms hosting user-generated content and reflect on the changing ways of offering services online.
The analysis of a relevant market on the digital market should be centred around user behaviour and how the results of examining that behaviour can be integrated in the market definition.
The update should fulfil, among others, the following objectives related to the definition of relevant market in the digital realm:
The analysis of vertical integration of markets and its results, including the impact of network effects on competition, e.g. the need for structural remedies based on openness and consumer freedom, rather than only the number of direct competitors.
For the relevant product market aspects, the analysis of demand substitutability should include restrictions to switching, as well as substitutability of digital services. Substitutability can be affected by consumers’ important non-monetary interests, such as the ability to participate on a platform anonymously, pseudonymously, or with a limited audience.
For the relevant product market aspects, the analysis of supply substitutability should include the cost of complying with applicable laws, including the availability of technologies (variety and pricing) that make it possible for services to effectively manage their legal obligations and risks as a condition of competitiveness (for example, the affordability or accessibility of content moderation tools, based on machine learning and/or artificial intelligence influences the ability to compete in the market where some companies can afford such technologies and others cannot).
The evaluation should consider the multi-jurisdictional nature of the internet, which has several effects:
It can favour competitors with the resources to comply across national boundaries, raising market entry costs.
It can favour competitors willing to provide uniform products or services that meet the lowest common denominators across jurisdictions (e.g., production in jurisdictions with the lowest labour or environmental standards, enforcement of content moderation policies according to the most speech-restrictive regimes, etc.)
Read full responseResponse to Policy Program - Digital Decade Compass
8 Dec 2021
Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU considers that the Policy Programme "Path to the Digital Decade" is based on worthy goals and enables a wide mandate to use any tools to reach them. Then, unfortunately, the ideas get more and more narrow. The “clear direction for the digital transformation” points to a small handful of areas: cooperation between EU institutions and member states and to ensure consistency, comparability and completeness of monitoring and reporting (everything needs to add up on paper) and a framework for so-called Multi-Country Projects.
We have been experiencing shortages of IT professionals for many years now and European scientists have been in the race for a quantum computer probably for even longer. Surely, to achieve those we need more money and coordination, but all of these targets are already possible within regulatory frameworks, be it national and EU-level. it is a waste of a good strategic opportunity to ponder on what we already know how to fix.
To better reflect the gals and the spirit of the "Digital Compass Communication" should include a focus on the most obvious issue tying into the broader effect of the digital transformation that has a horizontal dimension: lack of access to a truly public space. Whatever we will do about behaviourally driven algorithms and however well the social networks will deal with content moderation, they will still remain privatised spaces of a seemingly public debate. In that domain the European denizens have no large-scale alternative to the Big Tech.
Conversations on how such a European digital public sphere could come about have been initiated. A series of articles supported by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (https://socialeurope.eu/focus/european-digital-public-sphere) explores the various sides of the issue, legal, organisational, regulatory and financial. “The public sphere is not something we can or cannot afford.”, write Johanna Niesyto and Katrin Dapp in the introductory essay, “The public sphere and democracy are a nexus.” Another publication (https://www.irights-lab.de/publikationen/dps) is devoted to strategies for taking back control from Big Tech with various authors proposing “how the current crisis could boost our chances of breaking new ground by establishing an independent European Digital Public Space.”
We need to advance this discussion and we need various EU bodies to look into this possibility since without their involvement there will be no real public space. This is where the essence of the EU – adding value to problem solving that is greater that a simple sum of its part – can be very successfully employed. A mix of legislation curbing bad behaviour on the single market, policies fostering sustainable growth models, funding enabling creation of business models not based on secretive algorithmization and data extraction and expropriation of platforms from oversight over freedom of expression should be the strategic objectives for the European digital decade.
Responses to looming challenges will not be found solely in ensuring that once 80% of Europeans have basic digital skills, 20 million ICT specialists are employed, all populated areas are covered by 5G or that there is this one quantum computer plugged somewhere in Europe.
Ensuring that our human rights and dignity are not negotiated away by algorithms rests on the collective. The responsibility to master the free fall down the tech rabbit hole cannot depend solely on how well we swipe, copy and paste. The collective that bestowed large swaths of its wellbeing onto the EU has every right to expect that the EU can do more than copy and paste when planning for the next decade.
Read full responseMeeting with Filomena Chirico (Cabinet of Commissioner Thierry Breton)
20 Sept 2021 · Dsa and dma: application to collaborative platforms
Response to Requirements for Artificial Intelligence
3 Aug 2021
Wikimedia operates a number of online platforms that offer access to and re-use of the world's largest freely available datasets. These are used widely as training data for machine learning algorithms.
Wikimedia also develops and operates machine learning algorithms, mainly with the goal to make volunteer editors' work more efficient. One such example is ORES (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/ORES), a service that helps detect vandalism on Wikipedia and its sister projects.
Wikimedia worries about inherent biases in our data that are magnified by machine learning services. We constantly strive to recognise and remedy these. In 2019 we published a research on "Ethical and Human Centered AI" that we commissioned. It looks into the challenges and biases we were able to make out on our own projects.
From our experience one of the key tasks we have as a society in applying ML/AI software is to detect and correct biases. Biases are real-life discrimination practices that are also present it the datasets and magnified by the operation of AI tools.
One feature our ORES has is a so-called "feature-injection". Basically anyone can test the system by providing a an input (a user's edit history and a new edit) and checking whether the "vandalism" flag would be triggered. This can happen with either the live data from the projects or synthetic data provided by the tester. From our experience this opportunity to test the system for concrete biases ("Are female sounding editor names more likely to be flagged as vandals?") helps in detecting discriminatory practices.
Article 52
This is why we would like to consider if it would be possible to offer civil society groups or the general public a "testing option" for AI applications run by the public sector. This was a Roma rights organisation, for instance, could check whether software run by the local police force is unfairly biased against this group. One place such a "testing option" could be included is in Article 52 and address uses of AI software by the public sector.
Article 3
A further comment we have is on the definition of providers in Article 3. Many of the obligations of the Regulation are attached to providers, yet it seems very unclear who this is - the software developer, the reseller of the software, the service provider or the organisation using it? It seems very important to have a crystal clear definition that will easily be understand by a Finnish police authority, a Bulgarian software developer and an Irish trademark owner, alike.
Oversight authority
To ensure human oversight it is important for users and civil society to have access to enough information about how AI systems work. But is is also important to know which authority is responsible and what redress mechanisms citizens have. The Regulation remain unclear about how and where users can get help or file complaints/demands. It might be a good idea to specify this. The European Data Protection Board is a EU level authority that already has considerable knowledge and experience in the area of large datasets, models and algorithms.
Read full responseResponse to Policy Program - Digital Decade Compass
16 Jul 2021
Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU looks into the provisions of the Digital Compass Policy Programme with interest. We believe that delivery and commitment towards the common digital targets can only be effectuated if there is a clear and consistent framework of adoption and implementation across the EU. In turn, adoption and implementation cannot exist without a vision for governance that increases coordination and sets out clear rules and consequences of unsatisfactory compliance. In that aspect the scope of the Roadmap seems correct.
At the same time it is puzzling that both this Roadmap and its counterpart - the Roadmap for Declaration of Digital Principles come at a moment when two legal acts that are fundamental to the European digital ecosystem are already debated upon in the European Parliament: the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act. Two other cornerstones are already adopted with one facing difficulties with timely Europe-wide transposition (the Directive on Copyright in DSM) and another being in force for more than a month (The Terrorist Content Regulation). Other numerous elements of the digital legislative puzzle are also in the works (the AI Act, the Data Act, the Data Governance Act, to name a few). It seems that the legislative framework has been already set through these proposals; both the Principles and the Compass will have less impact as they will have come out late.
In the case of the Digital Compass and its scope including coordination it will be especially challenging. Both the DSA and DMA envision creation of various advisory and monitoring structures that will gather representatives of an array of bodies from the Member States (governmental and regulatory alike). Some of these structures will have overlapping roles. This setup may provide a challenging environment to effective and timely coordination, mainstreaming of approaches and creation of joint best practices or standards.
We perceive the insufficient implementation of key regulatory proposals as a problem that the Eu should solve with effective measures. It is uncertain if mere monitoring and reporting envisioned by the Digital Compass Roadmap will help achieve that, there is a need for a greater effort. The commitment of Member States in that area should be paired with a commitment of the European Commission to provide timely reviews of effectiveness of adopted legislation, on one hand. On the other, the EC should not issue new legislative proposals in the areas where there is no adequate implementation of the EU legislation already in place and its effectiveness is therefore unknown (as it was the case with the Terrorist content regulation proposal [now 2021/784] that was published a few days after the September 2018 deadline to implement the Directive on Combating Terrorism [2015/0625] that had been at tha time implemented by a handful of MSs).
Read full responseResponse to Data Act (including the review of the Directive 96/9/EC on the legal protection of databases)
25 Jun 2021
As a global movement that, among others, develops and runs the world's largest free knowledge base Wikidata (made in the EU!) we acknowledge and welcome the hard work of the Data Policy and Innovation unit in freeing up data and making it re-usable over the past years. Thank you!
In this feedback round we have decided to remain laser-focused on the issue that is the sui generis database right. A quarter of a century after the Database Directive came into force and after having gathered public feedback several times and commissioned several studies on the matter we are yet to see proof that the extra layer of IP protection on databases has achieved any of its goals.
We have not seen the European Commission, academics or any stakeholder present proof that the sui generis database right has lead to increased investment in the creation or maintenance of databases. On the contrary, we experience difficulties in gathering, structuring and providing data for free re-use. The exact scope of the right, its duration and its exceptions remain unclear. This costs hundreds of hours of editor time and more often than not leads to data not being re-used.
Taking a more global perspective, there is no proof showing that the EU's database creation has increased since the adoption of the Database Directive. There is no data showing that jurisdictions that do not have this extra IP right have seen less investment in the creation and maintenance of databases.
The sui generis database right is not covered by the Berne Convention. A main issue with it is knowing when a database is protected by it and when not. A neat and simple solution would be to allow database makers and maintainers to protect their databases by opting into protection. They could place a machine and human readable marker. This would allow us to safely re-use the vast majority of data from public databases where the makers don't need protection. A similar opt-in approach was used in the text and data mining exception in the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive. As TDM and databases are tightly related fields, it would make for good regulation to maintain a similar approach.
Read full responseResponse to Declaration of Digital Principles
8 Jun 2021
Free Knowledge Advocacy Group welcomes the initiative to propose a set of principles that guide the European way for the digital society. It is well noted that this plan encompasses principles of solidarity, democracy, prosperity and sustainability that are anchored in the empowerment of people and business. We see this framing as an attempt to imagine a potential of the EU policies as human-centred and reaching beyond the constraints of the Digital Single Market framework.
Wikimedia shares this vision in the aspects where policymaking opens up opportunities to refocus on human-centeredness, freedom of expression and meaningful inclusion of various communities and voices. We also see the insufficient embodiment of important principles of EU (proposed) legislation, which:
- does not sufficiently promote good governance in content moderation (copyright directive, terrorist content regulation, DSA provisions in art. 12 and 14),
- goes only half way to ensure real choice for people (Digital Markets Act and lacks in interoperability provisions) or to empower users to make choices that are right to them
- does not sufficiently address power disparities between technology providers and users (AI Act)
- does not ensure fostering diversity in the digital ecosystem (DMA in general, lack of a New Competition Tool)
Wikimedia’s vision for the internet comes from the movement that not only is one of the most robust self-governing online communities but also an example of a successful project that ensures access to knowledge though a non-surveillance based operational model. We believe that the principles described above should find its place in the Declaration of Digital Principles.
Moreover, many civil society organisations and experts contributed to the creation of the Shared Digital Europe framework that also provides excellent framing for the Declaration, with its four key principles: Enable Self-Determination, Cultivate the Commons, Decentralise Infrastructure and Empower Public Institutions (https://shared-digital.eu/).
The European Commission’s Roadmap outlines elements that are in need of further improvement. Since the proposed list of objectives includes “protection of intellectual creations of individuals in the online space”, we believe it should also encompass the creation that is based on the existence of copyright exceptions and limitations enabling, among others, parody, quotations, and educational uses. These exceptions should be universally harmonized across the EU based on the existing Union law and international conventions. Formulating this objective in the Declaration would serve as a useful framing for that.
Moreover, the strategic importance of the digital commons is crucial in achieving many other objectives. It is the digital commons that Wikipedia is a part of that enable access to trustworthy and transparent information. The commons are also a basis for innovation, exchange, and many trust-enforcing community practices that increase cooperation of citizens, academics, and businesses alike across the EU.
Read full response5 May 2021
Free Knowledge Advocacy Group welcomes the initiative to supplement the Digital Services Act with the proposal for a Regulation on contestable and fair markets in the digital sector (Digital Markets Act). The online ecosystem has been lacking an adequate framework, in which there is a differentiation between platforms considered to be the gatekeepers and other models of online intermediation.
However, we find both the final scope of it and the measures envisioned to fall short of the needs to not only prevent excessive vertical integration of services, but also to promote different models of growth that are not based on surveillance of internet users. The users will only benefit from the Regulation as proposed by the European Commission in a limited way, as its main focus is on B2B relationships. We also regret procedural shortcomings, such as the lack of civil society involvement under Art. 16, which will limit the Regulation’s effectiveness.
Disappointing scope
The fact that the plans to provide ex-ante legislation together with a New Competition Tool have been scrapped, is not a welcome development. Articles 101 & 102 of the Treaty leave room to create a new competition instrument, tackling tacit collusion practices online in a meaningful way and before they arise. The DMA provides a bare minimum compared not only to the suggested scope but even to the vocabulary of the set of recent consultations. Instead, the EC proposed a quite modest Digital Single Market adjustment instrument, which we consider a missed opportunity to meaningfully change the business landscape online and, in particular, to return decision-making powers to the users. If ex-ante measures are not self-executing obligations, and instead the emphasis is on case-by-case processes, the DMA’s added value will be limited.
Lack of focus on users
The DMA’s focus provides users with only moderate gains: For example an ability to uninstall pre-installed software apps, which can only be meaningfully implemented if gatekeepers cannot use behavioral nudges and techniques to undermine users’ decisions about which software to have on their devices.
Portability of data, another welcome development, cannot be acted upon meaningfully in practice, however, since there is no meaningful requirement of interoperability enabling users to connect with each other across multiple networks. It is understood that such an overhaul of existing practices needs to be carefully considered from the point of meaningful user consent, protection of personal data and privacy in general. The time to work out these considerations is now, as we are debating changes in the way gatekeepers will work in the future. Again, the focus of the DMA is a missed chance to meaningfully change the playing field.
Limiting the interoperability requirements to business users and providers of ancillary services without supplementing it with interoperability for users endangers us with further consolidation of power by gatekeepers. By opening up solely to businesses, which have a much weaker market position than gatekeepers, we are risking the imposition of technical standards by gatekeepers on the vast part of the online ecosystem, stifling innovation and emergence of non-surveillance-based business models.
It is also disappointing from the perspective of public good-oriented platforms, which could position themselves as alternatives to existing commercial platforms in a more effective way if barriers to access were lowered through interoperability requirements.The measures under article 6(1)(f) point in the right discussion, but they are not going far enough.
Read full responseResponse to Guidance on tackling disinformation
28 Apr 2021
In the context of dangerous spread of disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic and mixed results produced by the voluntary Code of Practice on Disinformation, the European Commission is calling on stakeholders to provide input for further steps in this policy area. Feedback form:
https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/12968-Guidance-on-tackling-disinformation
The fight for trustworthy knowledge and against online disinformation is in the genes of the Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia communities have always worked towards creating credible and reliable sources of information and have always sought to recognise and limit the spread of unreliable sources and non-factual information. Specific attention and community rules exist across the projects on estimating which sources are reliable and can be used on Wikipedia, for instance.
In 2018 Wikimedia (Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU) participated in the European Commission’s HLEG “Fake News” that produced a final report and a definition of the phenomenon for the EU institutions. We also participated in the subsequent forum that drafted the Code of Practice on Disinformation, which the European Commission is now looking to assess and further develop.
In February 2021, the Wikimedia Foundation unveiled a Universal Code of Conduct that defines deliberately introducing biased, false, inaccurate or inappropriate content as unacceptable behaviour. These apply to all contributors, functionaries within the projects, event organizers and participants, employees and board members of affiliates and employees and board members of the foundation itself.
Based on the wealth of all this experience, we would like to share the following ideas for improvement of the European Commission’s future actions on disinformation.
- Set up homogeneous, more detailed and clear key performance indicators (KPI) to enable effective measurement of platforms’ achievements. It is currently not always clear what we want a platform to achieve regarding online disinformation and how different practices compare.
- There should be an annual, public review process for these KPIs.
- The European Commission should ask the platforms to improve their reporting tools in terms of accessibility, clarity and feedback. Sending a report on potentially false content should be made, for the users, as straightforward as possible. The decision and action taken must also be reported in an accessible and shareable way.
- Increase the traceability of information. Media outlets should be encouraged to link to data and sources they cite in articles.
- Increase transparency and documentation. How systems, including algorithms, work must be as transparent as possible. Users must be able to understand what they see and why, and ideally also have access to parts of the code. Researchers should get full access to the code.
- Invest in media literacy education throughout people’s lives. Encourage partnerships in media and information education with recognised institutions and stakeholders in the world of education.
- Invest in fact checking organisations and in organisations that audit information sources. Ideally credibility ratings would be attached to the source of the information (e.g. the website), not the actual piece of content.
- Defund disinformation. Campaigns and sources intentionally spreading non-factual content are still financed or supported by advertising, including through major advertising networks.
- Disinformation will remain a phenomenon, even if we manage to restrict it. To counter it societies must increase investment in trustworthy information sources and build trust. There is not a single measure to achieve this, but we would welcome the European Commission working toward a strategy in this regard.
Read full responseResponse to Europe’s digital decade: 2030 digital targets
8 Mar 2021
1.User Rights Across the Union:
Currently economic rights are widely harmonised and applicable across national borders, user rights such as parody, freedom of panorama, digital lending and sharing remain territorial.
*By 2030 European can benefit from all their rights across the EU.*
2.Government Produced and Procured Content:
A main source of digitisation is government produced and financed content. It can kickstart digital initiatives and democratise our digital lives.
*By 2030 all government produced content is be re-usable.*
3.Preserving and Accessing National Cultural Heritage:
It is quite easy for a student in Sofia to visit and enjoy the gems of the Bulgarian National Library. But it might be prohibitively expensive for a child from Silistra to travel to Sofia to do the same.
*By 2030 100% of the repositories of National Archives and Libraries are digitised and accessible online.*
4. Neutral and Interoperable ICT:
In order for communications technology and the internet to remain a place for competition and exchange, we must “lock it open”. We need to protect our net neutrality safeguards and add platform interoperability rules.
*By 2030 Europeans continue to enjoy strong net neutrality protections and benefit from interoperability allowing them to send a message from one large platform to another without the need to be a user of both. *
5.Content Moderation:
The currently overarching issue is that many phenomena happen in the digital world that we, as a society, would like to avoid. Just as in the real world, there is no panacea. We will need government, organised civil society, individual citizens and businesses to work together to create many different tools for efficient content moderation that does not overblock or censor. The key is to have many different and competing models.
*By 2030 content moderation practices are versatile, transparent and most users are aware of inherent biases. Users themselves are an inherent part of content moderation.*
6.Cultural Frequencies and Open Spectrum (470 - 694 MHz):
This is a frequency range reserved for culture and media, while more and more of the spectrum is taken over by the needs of wireless devices. At the same time, we need an “open spectrum” where everyone can experiment with new techniques, services and devices.
*By 2030 the 470-694 MHz frequency range in the EU is explicitly reserved for culture and media. We also have a reserved open spectrum that is license free.*
7. Accessibility for People with Disabilities:
Set goals and principles are supported by sufficient funding under the RRF and MFF instruments, ensuring accessibility as binding criteria for funding.
*By 2030 accessibility is a binding criteria for EU funding.*
Read full responseResponse to Legislative framework for the governance of common European data spaces
27 Jan 2021
Wikimedia in Brussels (Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU)
Wikimedia believes that an online public space that is inclusive, accessible and competitive will depend on the existence of a variety of platform models and business models to choose from. The current dependence on very-large, for-profit, data-collecting businesses is establishing an economy and practices that are detrimental to the needed variety of services.
In this regard we welcome the prowess of the European Commission to not only try to open up more data, but to also envision fostering new types of collaborative services.
We nevertheless have several remarks on the proposal we would like to share:
1. Exclusion of not-for-profit entities from “data sharing services” (Article 14)
This is a welcome exception and we appreciate that the European commission uses the term “not-for-profit entities”, which we understand to include all types of services and organisations.
We feel that by limiting these entities to those that “collect data for objectives of general interest” the EU might create an unwanted legal uncertainty. Wikipedia, Wikidata and Europeana, for instance, do very much collect data for the general interest, but the free licenses used mean that this data can in turn be also used for private, for-profit purposes. Wikipedia and Wikidata information being integrated in on-board systems of Air France-KLM, Germanwings, Alexa and Siri are just some examples.
We would have more confidence in the Regulation if collaborative knowledge projects would be explicitly recognised as “general interest” endeavours.
2. Personal Data and GDPR
We understand and welcome the effort to try and ensure more available data is usable and used while respecting the EU’s world standard setting privacy laws.
We, however, have in conversations with lawyers and partners come to doubt whether and how anonymisation will be handled by competent bodies (Article 7(2)(b)) and whether the DGA will essentially rewrite the GDPR for the time being.
The provisions on data altruism are probably in parallel to GDPR provisions. These should be aligned with the data protection acquis and the GDPR must always prevail. Particular attention must be given to the definition of data altruism in Article 2 (10) and measures on re-use in Article 5.
In our mind, it would be advisable to either rewrite parts of the DGA in order to ensure that no GDPR provisions and principles are undermined or, most effectively, to completely remove per
3. Sui Generis Database Rights
We cannot overstate how much we support the European Commission’s position in Article 5(7) to bar public sector bodies from exercising sui general database rights.
It is, of course, a small patch that won’t solve the global problem: Namely that there is no proof of the sui generis database rights established by Directive 96/9/EC contributing to the creation and maintenance of databases in the EU. To the contrary, there is evidence of the opposite, not least around Wikidata.
We encourage the European Commission to work toward scrapping the sui generis database right or at the very least making it subject to registration. We also encourage the EU legislator to make the currently proposed limitation for public bodies a general one within this Regulation.
4. Role of Commons-Based Initiatives in the Data Sharing Ecosystem
Related to the first point, we would like to emphasise that many free & open projects that rely on free licenses and public domain works are already contributing to an ecosystem where access to information is more democratic and databases are part of the commons.
If re-use of data is a precondition for competition, innovation and economic growth, these projects that are part of the commons must be a central part of the discussion. While it is commendable that the EU is thinking about data altruism organisations, it remains unclear how such a concept would tie in with and, ideally, boost the commons.
Read full responseResponse to Implementing act on a list of High-Value Datasets
19 Aug 2020
In previous consultations Wikimedia has communicated to the Commission what criteria datasets should contain to be considered High Value Datasets. Therefore, we are taking the liberty to simply share a list of public datasets with the Commission that we believe should be open. We encourage the Commission to take the necessary steps to achieve this and offer public and technical support.
List of public datasets that should be open:
-Commercial/company register
- NGO register
- Procurement register
- Public spending (with per-transfer granularity)
- Air quality measurements in real time
- Construction permits
- Cadastral maps (geo-spatial data)
- EU programme spending data
- Spending of publicly owned enterprises and enterprises with publicly owned majority (with per-trasnfer granularity)
-Statistics on criminal investigations, deals with the prosecution, litigious civil and commercial cases
-Life after sentencing investigations
-Definitions of groups of crime
-Administrative decisions by consumer protection authorities
-Legislative, regulatory and administrative measures, including draft measures, procedural information related to their adoption
-->Accompanying documents, such as explanatory statements, impact assessments, opinions of advisory bodies and voting records
-Public transport timetables at national, regional, local levels, and cross-border, including delays, usage data, maintenance works and traffic information
Read full responseResponse to New competition tool
30 Jun 2020
Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU welcome the European Commission’s initiative to address structural competition problems in the form of a New Competition Tool, and recommend the Commission pursue Option 3. Structural competition issues pervade many different markets, and defining specific sectors as being “digital” or “non-digital” may create incentives for gamesmanship with sectoral definitions or corporate structuring.
In our opinion, structural risks to competition can create the conditions for consumer harms and market inefficiencies even before any particular firms might be recognized as dominant; conditions for structural competition problems can often be diagnosed ex ante. Therefore, we recommend that the Commission use a market structure-based approach. The Commission’s April 2019 Report identifies a number of promising areas for future work, including tying or leveraging market dominance into other markets. This not only occurs when a firm has achieved dominance through normal competitive means in the first market, but also when it attains dominance through the operation of law, such as when limited monopolies are legally provided (by the state, or by licensors) via intellectual property exclusivities.
The Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU unites the European Wikimedia chapters and communities so they can have a clear and coherent position on major legislative and political changes affecting the vision, mission and values of the Wikimedia movement. We support the feedback of the Wikimedia Foundation on the topic.
Read full responseResponse to Digital Services Act: deepening the Internal Market and clarifying responsibilities for digital services
30 Jun 2020
Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU welcome the debate on the responsibilities of digital services. We believe that a regulatory framework must preserve and promote the freedom of imparting and receiving information without interference by public authority; promote freedom of expression; and protect users from harmful and illegal activities.
For all measures contemplated at the EU level, including legislative action, non-binding ones, and voluntary cooperation, careful consideration needs to be given to how changes in the incentive structure might affect the enjoyment of fundamental rights. As the roadmap states, “protections of users’ rights - including the freedom to receive or impart information - are not always sufficiently robust across the board.”
Special consideration needs to be given to how the commercialization of the public debate (which now takes place on platforms regulated by private terms of service) affects the freedom of expression. New regulatory instruments must not create incentives for overblocking content. For this reason, we strongly believe that the foundation of the e-Commerce Directive (liability exemption for intermediaries and no general monitoring obligation) should remain in place.
As stated in the roadmap, an important step in this direction would be to reduce information asymmetries between platforms and users by improving transparency around online advertising and algorithmic accountability. Users of digital services should always be able to tell the difference between user-generated content and paid content. Moreover, users must have an accessible option to sort the content displayed to them. It is clear that some of these problems, including issues related to the spread of misinformation, are inextricably linked to the data-driven business model of social media platforms. Introducing interoperability requirements could enable users to choose different services based on different business models.
The Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU unites the European Wikimedia chapters and communities so they can have a clear and coherent position on major legislative and political changes affecting the vision, mission and values of the Wikimedia movement. We support the feedback of the Wikimedia Foundation on the topic.
Read full response30 Jun 2020
Free Knowledge Advocacy Group, welcomes the initiative of devising ex ante rules to ensure that markets characterised by large online platforms remain fair and contestable for innovators, businesses, and new market entrants.
Characteristics of gatekeepers that exacerbate competition harms include a) content curation practices that lead to presenting different users with different information and opportunities of interaction, b) data-driven business model based on the use of algorithmic tools in order to commercialise behavioral data. It may be said that these platforms’ main clients are not users that generate content and interact with it, but services and businesses that benefit from being connected with many consumers through their services. We believe that these parameters should be incorporated in establishing whether a platform displays a gatekeeping potential or is, in fact, a gatekeeper.
We welcome the plan to adopt a regulatory framework that includes restrictions to unfair trading practices by gatekeepers as well as tailor-made remedies on a case-by-case basis where necessary and justified. We strongly believe that, on a case-by-case basis, requirements regarding personal data portability and interoperability should be among the remedies enforced by a competent regulatory body. This could be reinforced by a request to demonstrate that a platform is capable of offering adequate services in a given Member State by providing adequate human overview/moderation services in the language of the MS and within its cultural and historical context.
FKAGEU supports the position of the Wikimedia Foundation on the topic.
Read full responseResponse to Evaluation of the Commission Notice on market definition in EU competition law
15 May 2020
The update of market definition notice is needed in respect of changes on the market happening since the inception of the notice, especially regarding the emergence of the Digital Single Market and what we now call the “attention economy”.
The analysis of a relevant market should be centered around user behaviour and how the results of examining that behaviour can be integrated in the market definition. The scope of the evaluation should include a human-centered approach, and examine how current rules serve the assessment of the benefits of platform economy, and its dominant actors, to the users of online services - such as consumer freedom.
Therefore, the definitions of demand substitutability should include restrictions to switching (incl. portability of content, personal data, and identity), as well as substitutability of digital services.
The analysis of supply substitutability should include the availability of technologies - such as those automating content moderation - that make online platforms use to effectively manage their legal obligations and risks as a condition of competitiveness.
We are looking forward to the upcoming public consultation on the matter.
Read full response19 Aug 2019
Considerations:
1. Technology and skills needed to digitise cultural heritage is increasingly accessible and affordable.
2. The collapse of the city archive in Cologne, the civil war in Syria and the fire in the National Museum in Brazil have painfully demonstrated that our cultural heritage has an expiration date.
3. The modest revenues reported in surveys and testimonies (see attached research) suggest that cultural heritage institutions don’t normally operate digitisation and image licensing activities at a profit.
Issue:
Yet, cultural heritage institutions are often overwhelmed by the challenge to digitise their archives and are extremely hesitant to grant general public access even to public domain material. Many collaboration projects with civil society groups that would help remedy this fall through.
Potential reasons:
1. The institutions’ innate inertia stemming, primarily, from a fear of loss of control.
2. Legal hurdles, including copyright, related rights and licensing that foster insecurities.
3. Pressure exerted by policy makers on institutions to generate revenue on digitisations.
4. “Open models” are seen as complicated (technical and legalistic)
Potential remedies:
1. Create Best Practice Guidelines on Points 5. and 6. of the Recommendation
2. Look into Point 9. and evaluate the need to act on the EU level
3. Review the Orphan Works Directive
4. Consider the need to offer a EU hosting service for digitised cultural works
Research:
Wikimedia has commissioned research in the area of museum revenues. We are sharing the paper with you.
Read full response