[Qgis-user] The case for a Europe user group ?

[Karl Magnus Jönsson]

Hi all
Good idea. Among your points below, I also see other EU directives to follow and work with such as security. But I somehow fear that it could be difficult to gather engagement for such an organization. Hopefully, I am wrong. Could the national user groups be members of the European user group?

Kind regards

Karl-Magnus Jönsson

Från: QGIS-User <qgis-user-bounces at lists.osgeo.org> För Valentin Buira via QGIS-User
Skickat: den 13 januari 2026 20:33
Till: qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org
Ämne: [Qgis-user] The case for a Europe user group ?

Hi all

Sorry for hijacking this global mailing list for a local user group topic (even though I seek the experience from outside Europe as well)

As the title of this email suggests, I would like to discuss the case for a new QGIS Europe user group. Is there any interest ? Would it be relevant ?

To me given our specificities, I would argue the response to these questions is yes

In random order a mix of rationales and potential goals for a European user group:

* Provides a representation for European countries that do not have a user group representation. At the moment only 12 out of 27 EU members have a QGIS user group, and if we get a broader definition of Europe [1]including candidates to the EU, non EFTA members, and former member we get 19 out of 41 have one [1] .
* I know it sounds dreadful but the INSPIRE directive should make studies that use the INSPIRE data interpolate to any other countries.
* Mutualize plugin that only vary by language and translate them to other european languages,  for example  "Spanish Inspire Catastral Downloader" and  "Italy Inspire Cadastre Downloader"
* Lobbying (in a good way) for more open data across the EU (cf https://data.europa.eu/en/open-data-maturity/2025 )
* Sovereignty, QGIS is the archetype of the geocommon. It belongs to everyone, for free, forever. QGIS is not rooted into any countries, and is not subject to any kill switches neither technical nor political.
* QGIS it's free to use but not to develop, mutualize funding QGIS feature that benefits users of this potential future user group.
* Apply for EU funds [2], if someone has any experience with it, it would be very welcome.

Side note : I would advocate to call it Europe user group and not EU user group because I feel like Ukraine and other candidate countries to join EU should definitely be included as the Bruxelles effect make their GIS data converge before even joining the EU

Regards, and in hope to see this happening.
Valentin Buira

[1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1N_727UP3XSEtGnH5SprPs76HPc8XOe0PrZ3purp7KbA/edit?usp=sharing
[2] https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/support/mobile-eufame

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