Wikimedia Europe has been supporting public policy and affiliate collaboration for over two years now — building on the 10-year legacy of the Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU. This year is an important one for our network of 31 Wikimedia affiliates: we’ve elected a new Board at our General Assembly, and we’ve launched a process to renew our shared strategy and broaden the scope of our work.
New leadership for a new strategic period
We warmly welcome Alek Tarkowski and Marian Grubben as new members of the Board. Alek is co-founder and Director of Strategy at Open Future, a European think tank focused on the digital commons. Marian brings experience from her work at the European Commission, where her last project was Single Digital Gateway, known through its public interface, Your Europe.
Claudia Garad (Executive Director at Wikimedia Österreich) and Capucine-Marin Dubroca-Voisin (representing Wikimedia France) were re-elected, providing continuity in governance. At its first meeting on 20 May, the Board co-opted Rebecca MacKinnon, VP Global Advocacy at the Wikimedia Foundation, as its fifth member. The Board also confirmed its officers: Claudia will serve as President, Capucine as Treasurer, and Alek as Secretary.
“Wikimedia is a unique, flagship project for the knowledge commons, and I’m glad that I will be able to support it.”, said Alek Tarkowski, “WMEU is also unique as an organization representing a strong, Europe-wide community – with a singular voice of European citizens and organizations, who believe in knowledge sharing.”
Our General Assembly was a chance to take stock and consider what lies ahead. Members approved the 2024 narrative and financial reports and adopted the work plan for 2025. Among the priorities is a renewal of our strategy — a process that will involve the Board, staff, and members through working groups to shape our direction for the next five years.
Towards a members-driven network
We also continued the conversation on how we collaborate as a network. Van Anh Dam, our network management specialist, shared the initial outcomes of her network mapping, helping us better understand who we are and how we connect across contexts. This work will guide further discussions on capacity building and shared practices. A series of online sessions will follow, where we’ll continue exploring what effective collaboration can look like and draft guiding principles together.
One idea that emerged from within the network is to set up working groups involving member representatives and external experts around topics such as AI, diversity, and strategy. At the GA, we co-drafted the first version of the guidelines that these groups will follow. Over the summer, we’ll be setting up the groups, with their work beginning later in the year.
Public policy at the heart of our work
While public policy may seem far from day-to-day editing, it plays a growing role in shaping the environment for free knowledge. One of the GA highlights was a workshop by the Wikimedia Foundation’s Ricky Gaines, presenting how Wikipedia is approaching the risk assessments now required by the Digital Services Act (DSA) – a major EU regulation setting new rules for transparency and accountability of large online platforms. Disinformation, especially around elections, has been identified as one of the key risks.
To support this work, Wikimedia Europe has commissioned a study from the University of Amsterdam on legal frameworks addressing disinformation and their potential impact on free knowledge projects. This will be supplemented by computational analysis by the Eurecat Foundation from Barcelona. Presentations by representatives of both organisations were met with a lot of interest at the GA. The findings will help us better understand the challenges and inform our positions in public conversations.
“At Wikimedia Europe we collaborate in a diverse ecosystem of Wikimedia affiliates with various cultural and organisational backgrounds”, observes Claudia Garad. “At our general assemblies the beauty of this diverse landscape becomes quite tangible in the people who come together in Prague to co-create something that is bigger than the sum of its parts. It’s a demonstration of the huge potential we have as a movement and what can be unlocked in an environment of mutual appreciation and trust.”
The GA brought together 22 of our 31 members in person and featured 11 presentations led by community members and partners. It was a rich and thoughtful gathering — full of reflection, learning, and exchange. Many elements of the format were new, and your feedforward is already helping us shape future assemblies to better serve everyone involved.
Thank you to all who contributed to the conversations and the work ahead. We look forward to continuing this journey together.
Can you help us translate this article?
In order for this article to reach as many people as possible we would like your help. Can you translate this article to get the message out?
Start translation