Code of Conduct #FNF25

This document is adapted from and builds upon the Code of Conduct of the Tech and Society Summit co-hosted by EDRi, which was based on the the Berlin Code of Conduct and draws also from concepts used in Geek Feminism’s community anti-harassment policy and Equinox Initiative for Justice Community Agreement.

Purpose

The goal of this Code of Conduct is to ensure that FNF25 is inclusive of a varied and diverse community of people. We are committed to providing a respectful, safe, just, and community-oriented environment for all. In particular, this requires a commitment not to replicate any form of harassment, discrimination or violence, with particular attention to groups experiencing discrimination on the basis of their age, gender and gender identity, sexual orientation, health status, body size, ability, race, ethnicity, religion, migration status, class, socioeconomic and work status.

This Code of Conduct outlines our expectations for all those who participate in the event, as well as the consequences for unacceptable behaviour. We invite all those who participate in FNF25 to help us create safe(r) and positive experiences for everyone.

Expected behaviour

Exercise consideration and respect in your speech and actions.
Attempt collaboration before conflict.
Respect the gender identity of all people we engage with, including the use of their correct pronouns.
Be actively conscious of people’s personal space, individual needs and consent.
Maintain a presumption of belief of anyone alleging to experience unacceptable behaviour.
Refrain from demeaning, discriminatory, or harassing behaviour and speech.
Be mindful of your surroundings and of your fellow participants. Alert the organisers if you notice a dangerous situation, someone in distress, or violations of this Code of Conduct, even if they seem inconsequential.
Acknowledging that each of us is in a process of growth, we commit to being open to discuss potential harmful conduct with patience, to receiving feedback about our conduct and committing to improve.
We understand that we are all humans who are not perfect. We all make mistakes from time to time and we all have been socialized in a society full of discriminatory patterns and behaviours. Let us all try to do our best.

Unacceptable behaviour

Unacceptable behaviours include:

• intimidating …
• harassing …
• abusive …
• discriminatory …
• derogatory … or
• demeaning …
• … speech or actions by any participant.

Harassment includes:

• harmful or prejudicial verbal or written comments related to gender identity, sexual orientation, race, religion, disability, class, migration status;
• inappropriate or non-consensual use of nudity and/or sexual images;
• inappropriate depictions of violence (including presentation slides);
• deliberate misgendering;
• deliberate intimidation,
• stalking or following;
• harassing photography or recording;
• disruption of talks or other events;
• inappropriate physical contact, and
• unwelcome sexual attention.

Consequences of unacceptable behaviour

We maintain a commitment to take seriously and investigate any instance of harassment, intimidation, discrimination or any other unacceptable behaviour when flagged.

Unacceptable behaviour from any community member, including sponsors and those with decision-making authority, will not be tolerated. Anyone asked to stop unacceptable behaviour is expected to comply immediately.

If a community member engages in unacceptable behaviour, we may take any action we deem appropriate, up to and including a permanent expulsion from the event.

If you witness or are subject to unacceptable behaviour

If you are subject to or witness unacceptable behaviour, or have any other concerns, please notify us as soon as possible.

Addressing grievances

If you feel you have been falsely or unfairly accused of violating this Code of Conduct, you should notify one of the event organisers with a concise description of your grievance.

Scope

We expect all event participants (attendees, speakers, moderators, contributors, paid or otherwise; sponsors; MEPs and other guests) to abide by this Code of Conduct during this event – online and in-person – as well as in all one-on-one communications pertaining to this event. The scope of the event includes all activities during Freedom Not Fear 2025, such as at the conference venue, the networking dinner or the European Parliament visit.

License and attribution

Berlin Code of Conduct is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license. It is based on the pdx.rb Code of Conduct.

From 26 to 29 September 2025, Freedom not Fear, a self-organised conference on privacy and digital rights, will take place in Brussels.

We invite people from all across Europe to meet and work towards more freedom in the digitalised world, to plan actions against increasing surveillance and to promote stronger civil rights.

Do you have a question that is not answered here? Please contact us and let us know.

Table of Contents

1  Locations

• 26–28 September Conference venue: JES Brussels (Werkhuizenstraat 3, 1080 Sint-Jans-Molenbeek (OpenStreetMap)
• 29 September European Parliament (EP): 60 rue Wiertz / Wiertzstraat 60, Brussels (OpenStreetMap)

2  Participation – How can I register?

The FNF (un)conference from Friday evening to Sunday is open for everyone. You can find the call for registrations here: https://freedomnotfear.org/2025/call-for-registrations

Registration is not mandatory. You can join as long as there are places available, but by registering you reserve a spot and make sure you receive all the relevant information.

We would appreciate if you could register via the form in any case, as the information is very important for our planning. In the form you can also indicate if you’d be interested in participating in the visit of the European Parliament (EP) on Monday, and if you require support with travel or accommodation. Participating in the EP visit requires timely registration.

This link will take you straight to the registration form: https://freedomnotfear.org/register

3  Costs for Conference & Food

There is no registration fee, but we do ask for voluntary donations to cover expenses such as venue hire and facilitation. During the event we will ask for donations for lunches and networking dinner(s) as well as donations to support organisational expenses.
Please bring cash!

4  Travel & Reimbursement

We encourage travelling by train rather than plane.

For planning your journey, here are some approximate times to guide you: The conference will probably start at ca. 18:00 on Friday, so try to arrive in the hour before for welcoming and socialising. The EP visit is scheduled to end at about 14:00 on Monday.

We’re trying to obtain financial support for travel costs. Thanks to MEP invitations and donations, we can offer some financial support for travel expenses to those who wouldn’t be able to (completely) cover their travel expenses themselves. Make sure to always keep receipts and tickets, because we can’t reimburse travel expenses otherwise.

If you require financial support to participate in FNF25, please indicate this in the sign-up form and submit before 11 August.

See below at “Official EP visit & meeting with MEPs” for more information.

5  Accommodation

We generally ask participants to make their own arrangements. We do encourage couchsurfing and try to facilitate contacts among participants who can offer or seek a place to stay.
A small number of beds is available in shared dormitories on the conference grounds.

6  Catering / Food

Usually we book catering for lunch on Saturday and Sunday and organise a networking dinner on Saturday evening. We are further exploring whether we can organise similar dinner opportunities for Friday and/or Sunday.

You can help us plan this by indicating your interest during registration.

7  Official EP visit & meeting with MEPs

We’re organising an EP visit at the invitation of MEPs, as we have done in the past. European citizens may receive a travel reimbursement for participating in this EP visit.

We cannot guarantee a spot for all participants. If you want to be part of the visit, please make sure to indicate so in the registration form (deadline: 11 August).

We will review all registrations at the end of the sign-up period and allocate the available spots and will send you an e-mail with the relevant information for the next steps to confirm and register for the EP visit. Once you have been confirmed for the EP visit, participation is mandatory and comes along with some financial support for travel and accommodation. This will also require an official registration with your official national ID and valid documents brought for the EP visit.

8  Self-organised MEP & policy-maker meetings

The European Union is changing. We feel it is more important than ever to share our ideas and concerns, to network and to develop strategies for digital rights advocacy. We strongly encourage FNF participants to reach out to EU-politicians well before the conference and to schedule personal meetings with them in Brussels (ideally after 14:00 on Monday when we are done with the EP visit).

You can use these meetings with policy-makers to discuss topics and issues that were brought up at FNF. Last year, we prepared a guide to help you with that. We will update this guide soon and we are planning an online info session on this in August (week 34).

You can help others in getting in touch with policy makers? Please consider to offer a session, prepare MEP meetings together during the weekend and take other participants along!

9  Schedule

The rough schedule is:

• Friday, 26 September, 18:00 (tbc): registration and opening
• Saturday 27 September, all day: your sessions | opening plenary at 9:30 (tbc)
• Saturday evening: networking dinner (tbc)
• Sunday 28 September all day: your sessions | opening plenary at 10:00 (tbc)
• Monday, 29 September: 9:30 (tbc) – 14:00: EP visit | afternoon: self-organised advocacy meetings with policy makers

10  Programme

FNF follows a barcamp format where the programme is being created on the spot by participants’ contributions.

We invited everyone to consider and submit session proposals earlier. This call is still open. Submitting your session in advance helps us to create a first rough schedule, prevent conflicting schedules in case someone can attend FNF only at a specific time slot or connect people who want to hold sessions on the same topic.

We will compile a preliminary programme and more sessions will be added during the morning plenaries of FNF.

11  Language

The main language for communication and workshops at FNF25 will be English.

We cannot provide facilities for translation/interpretation. If you organise a session and find that it will be more appropriate to hold it in another language, please check with the participants that they are okay with that or provide some help for taking part in English.

12  Code of Conduct

We want everyone at Freedom Not Fear 2025 to be as safe and empowered to participate as possible. At the event we ask everyone to be conscious of your own behaviour and respect needs for distance or other safety measures of people around you. There will be a code of conduct for FNF25 and we ask everyone participating and co-organising to read the code of conduct beforehand. We consider participation in Freedom of Fear 2025 as acknowledgement of the FNF25 code of conduct.

https://freedomnotfear.org/2025/code-of-conduct-fnf25

13  Stay informed

To stay informed about FNF-related developments and meet other participants & friends, sign up to the mailing list:
https://listen.akvorrat.org/mailman/listinfo/akv-international

Historically Freedom not Fear was founded by people from the German working group against data rention (AKVorrat) in 2006. The title “Freedom not Fear” is used by AKVorrat and like-minded groups for a series of activities related to human rights internationally. There have been events of all kind supporting human rights called “Freedom not Fear” from South America, the United States, Canada and all over Europe. The Brussels Freedom not Fear started as one activity out of many around the globe. During the first Brussels Freedom not Fear in 2011, it was decided to use “AKV-international” as the official mailing list for FNF instead of starting a new mailing list. Today this list is exclusively used by Freedom not Fear.

14  Donations

Since FNF has no official organisational structure, we need to collect donations via some other legal entity. This year, the non-profit association Digitale Gesellschaft from Germany is providing an account for donations – our heartfelt thanks for that!

Donations to the Digitale Gesellschaft account will reach us without any deduction. Please mark your donations clearly by stating “FNF25 donation” in the reference.

Bank details:
Recipient: Digitale Gesellschaft e. V.
IBAN: DE34 4306 0967 1125 0128 02
BIC: GENODEM1GLS
Bank: GLS Bank
Reference: FNF25 donation

https://freedomnotfear.org/2025/donate

15  How is FNF organised?

Freedom not Fear is organised by a group of committed volunteers who prepare throughout the year. The event itself then is largely self-organised by participants.

The organising team is newly set up every year. Looking for an adequate venue and accommodation, contacting MEPs and dealing with a lot of EP administration and communication is part of the tasks as well as calculating a budget, looking for donations and funding, writing texts, setting up forms, advertising the event and communicating with participants.

Interested to join the organising team? Great! Check our call for co-organisers and don’t hesitate to contact us.

This year the event is organised purely by volunteers and with the help of German-based non-profit association Digitale Gesellschaft. We often receive further support by other digital rights NGOs and will make this transparent.

Let’s make FNF25 happen!

Since FNF has no official organisational structure, we need to collect donations via some other legal entity. This year, the non-profit association Digitale Gesellschaft from Germany is providing an account for donations – our heartfelt thanks for that!

Donations to the D64 account will reach us without any deduction. Please mark your donations clearly by stating “FNF25 donation” in the reference.

Bank details:

Recipient: Digitale Gesellschaft e. V.
IBAN: DE34 4306 0967 1125 0128 02
BIC: GENODEM1GLS
Bank: GLS Bank
Reference: FNF25 donation

Please always mark your donations as “FNF25 donation”!

Thank you for supporting Freedom not Fear 2025!

Freedom not Fear 2025 – Registration open!

Please join us for 2025’s edition of Freedom not Fear, 26–29 September 2025 in Brussels and register now!

Registration

As places are limited, please register as soon as possible but in any case by 11 August 2025.
Click here for the registration form.

We will publish additional participant information in a separate blogpost and update it over time. Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have further questions.

EP visit and reimbursement

As part of Freedom not Fear we will try to organise a visit with MEPs in the European Parliament. European Union citizens who participate in FNF and in this visit are eligible for travel reimbursement and a fixed allowance thanks to visitor quotas of the MEPs who support us. For those of you who wish to participate in the visit of the European Parliament, we will need to collect additional information. If you indicated interest during the registrations and we can allocate you a spot, we will reach out to you via e-mail.

Registration for the FNF events from Friday to Sunday is not compulsory. However, in order to take part in the EP visit on Monday and to receive any allowances you must register. The European Parliament travel reimbursement is linked to an official visit to the European Parliament on Monday morning, 29 September, and the Parlamentarium. In case this is relevant for your travel arrangements: This EP visit program concludes by 2pm on Monday but participants can choose to stay there longer or to schedule advocacy meetings with policy-makers in the afternoon.

If you have trouble taking part due to financial restrictions, please let us know in the registration form and we will try to find a solution. We have some limited capacity for financial support for travel expenses to those who wouldn’t be able to (completely) cover their travel expenses themselves or who are not eligible for the EP visit.

Spread the word

More details on the schedule and programme for FNF 2025 are going to be published ahead of the conference. Also watch the Fediverse for #fnf25 and #FreedomNotFear or follow our Mastodon account at @fnf@eupolicy.social – and help spread the word!

Dear friends of privacy & data protection and anyone interested in digital rights. The Freedom Not Fear 2025 team is looking for additional co-organisers. Together we want to prepare the annual self-organised conference on digital rights and data protection. #FNF25 will take place on 26–29 September 2025 in Brussels (Friday–Monday) but preparations started way before that.

At Freedom Not Fear (FNF), people from across Europe and beyond come together to advocate for freedom in the digitalized world, plan actions against attacks on civil liberties and increasing surveillance, and seek discussions with decision-makers.

If you want to make Freedom Not Fear 2025 happen, please join us. You can participate in the organising efforts and online meetings remotely. But if you are based in Brussels and/or have some speak French/Dutch, this is especially helpful as many of us are from other (European) countries.

Freedom Not Fear is a community that co-creates the conference and actions. As co-organisers we try to do the relevant preparations and outreach to make this possible. Things we do include:

• Regular meetings of the whole team (at the time of writing: bi-weekly)
• Sub-groups on specific topics, such as logistics for the conference venue, preparing a programme structure and inviting people to contribute their ideas, reaching out to policy-makers at EU institutions to engage with them on the weekend or on our ‘advocacy Monday’, fundraising, communications, awareness, event / organising tech, session documentation and much more.
• We try to enable the participation of people from civil society organisations and other activists even if they don’t have their own budget available.
• Try to create a space that is as safe and diverse as possible, acknowledging that we continuously need to learn and improve.
• Your idea! Every person can bring their own ideas and experiences to the group and together we try to make it work if it fits with Freedom Not Fear.

If you would like to shape the event, please don’t hesitate to get in touch: details can be found here on how to contact us via e-mail, where to find our social media account in the Fediverse and about the international mailing list. At the moment our meetings take place online, bi-weekly on Wednesdays from 8pm (CEST).

Mark your calendars for Freedom Not Fear 2025!

The annual self-organized conference on digital rights and data protection will take place

on 26–29 September 2025 (Friday–Monday).

At Freedom Not Fear, people from across Europe and beyond come together to advocate for freedom in the digitalized world, plan actions against attacks on civil liberties and increasing surveillance, and seek discussions with decision-makers.

The date has been set and volunteers have started preparing the event. We are working to find the location and sort out funding. Also, we’re looking for more volunteers to help us organize the event. Our next meeting will be on Wednesday, 19 February, at 20:00 CET. If you would like to help and join this or any later meeting, or if you have any suggestions, please get in touch!

Stay tuned and watch this space for the latest news: https://freedomnotfear.org/

We look forward to seeing you in September!

PS: If you plan to attend Freedom Not Fear, you might want to stay on 1–2 days to also attend Privacy Camp 2025, which is organized by European Digital Rights (EDRi) and others. This will take place on 30 September, the day after Freedom Not Fear closes.