From 8 to 11 November 2024, 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, plan actions against increasing surveillance and against other attacks on civil rights.
Freedom not Fear 2024
8 – 11 November (Friday–Monday)
Mundo Matongé (Sat&Sun) · European Parliament (Mon)
Do you have a question that is not answered here? Please let us know at contact@freedomnotfear.org
Table of Contents
1 Locations
- Conference venue: Mundo Matongé (Rue d’Edimbourg 26, 1050 Brussels (OpenStreetMap)
- European Parliament (EP): 60 rue Wiertz / Wiertzstraat 60, Brussels (OpenStreetMap)
You can use this map to find the locations:
2 Participation – How can I register?
Preregistrations are closed but you can simply register at the venue.
3 Registration & Expenses
We are not asking for a registration fee, but we do ask for voluntary donations to cover expenses such as venue hire and faciliation, also to support others who can’t afford an expensive trip. During the event we will kindly request your donation for lunches and our networking dinner on Saturday evening as well as donations to support organisational expenses.
Please bring cash!
4 Travel & Reimbursement
We encourage travelling by train rather than plane.
When planning your departure, please keep in mind that there might be meetings scheduled on Monday afternoon with MEPs and other policy makers until about 14:00.
We’re trying to facilitate financial support for travel costs. Thanks to MEP invitations and a small grant we secured and donations from some generous individuals, we can likely 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, we might need them for reporting.
If you need financial support, please indicate this in the sign-up form and submit before 30 September.
Form closed.
See below at “Official EP visit & meeting with MEPs” for more information.
5 Accommodation
We are not organising hotel accomodation this year and we 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.
If you are looking for hotel recommendations, this is where we were in the last years:
Hotel Adagio Access Brussels Europe, 12 rue de l’Industrie, Brussels (OpenStreetMap)
6 Catering / Food
On Saturday evening, 9 November 2024, from 19h, we will organise the famous FNF networking-dinner again. The food will be prepared by a group of volunteers and will cost us a contribution of an estimated 12 €.
Please, register to take part in the dinner)
Registration is closed. Get in touch if you want to join at short notice.
Please bring cash to pay for the dinner
7 Official EP visit & meeting with MEPs
We plan to organise 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.
However, we cannot guarantee enough spots for all participants at this point.
If you want to be part of the visit, please make sure to indicate so in the registration form (deadline: 30 September).
Registration closed.
We will review all registrations at the end of the sign-up period and allocate the available spots. 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 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, network and develop strategies for digital rights advocacy.
We strongly encourage everyone to schedule meetings with policy-makers ahead of time, so that you can discuss with them the topics and sessions you brought to FNF. We prepared a guide to help you with that.
You can help others in getting in touch with policy makers? Please offer a session, prepare MEP meetings together and take others along!
9 Schedule
The rough schedule is:
- Friday, 8 November, 18:00 : registration desk opens, then opening and keynote by Ella Jakubowska, Head of Policy at EDRi
- Saturday 9 November, all day: your sessions | opening plenary at 9:30
- Saturday night: networking dinner
- Sunda 10 November all day: your sessions | opening plenary at 10:00
- Monday, 11 November: EP visit, 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 submit session proposals before. This helps us to create a first rough schedule, prevent conflicting schedules in case someone can attend FNF only at a specific time slot or bring people together who want to hold sessions on the same topic. We compiled a preliminary programme and more sessions will be added during the morning plenaries of FNF.
11 Language
The main language of communication and workshops will be English. However, it is possible to also offer workshops or sessions in other languages. If someone is not comfortable communicating in English at the event, please support each other with translations.
12 Awareness
We want everyone at Freedom Not Fear 2024 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 is a code of conduct for FNF24 and we ask everyone participating and co-organising to read the code of conduct beforehand. We consider participation in Freedom of Fear 2024 as acknowledgement of the FNF24 code of conduct.
https://freedomnotfear.org/2024/code-of-conduct
You can contact the awareness team at fnf24-awareness (@) posteo.net (PGP Fingerprint: 5323 6597 0BD7 1B2F D791 D318 525E 0B30 54EA 95F0)
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 D64 – Center for Digital Progress 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 “FNF” or “Freedom Not Fear” in the reference.
Bank details:
Recipient: D64 – Zentrum für Digitalen Fortschritt
IBAN: DE13 4306 0967 1134 4765 00
BIC: GENODEM1GLS
Bank: GLS Bank
Reference: FNF / Donation
https://freedomnotfear.org/2024/call-for-donations
15 How is FNF organised?
Freedom not Fear is traditionally organised by a group of committed volunteers with support from last year’s organisers and administrative support from some official body.
The organising team is newly set up every year and starts preparing the event around February. 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 or donate for the event? E-mail us at contact@freedomnotfear.org.
This year the event is organised purely by volunteers with the help of German-based non-profit association D64 – Center for Digital Progress from Germany hosting our finances and supporting funding efforts. Therefore the event will be much more self-organised, we are not booking hotel accommodation nor professional lunch catering. However, if anyone has capacity to organise some lunch for Saturday and Sunday, and someone to organise some couch surfing / sleeping places in Brussels, you’re warmly welcome, please get in touch!