Europeans believe in democracy but increasingly doubt that it works. They recognise the risks clearly, from distrust of institutions and disinformation to opaque AI-driven political content, yet they lack the infrastructure to turn that concern into participation. Digital democracy tools promise to close this gap, but the conditions that make them legitimate, such as accountability, hybrid access, visible impact and human oversight, are slow and costly to build, and the market has not delivered them.
A new policy brief from INNOVADE (Innovative Democracy Through Digitalisation), a Horizon Europe project in which Beyond the Horizon ISSG is a partner, responds to exactly that gap. Titled "Holding Democracy Together: A common European baseline for trustworthy digital democracy in Europe", the brief distils eighteen months of research: a citizen survey, a questionnaire of 67 public officials, a mapping of 141 digital democracy platforms, an expert survey of 331 specialists, twenty country interviews, and validation through real-world Living Labs in Geel, San Martín de la Vega and Thessaloniki.
From this evidence base, the authors set out ten recommendations organised in three layers. Support pillars cover the conditions every initiative must meet before launch, including a Minimum Viable Legitimacy standard for procurement, mandatory impact accountability so no citizen contribution disappears into a "black box", and proportional identity models matched to what is genuinely at stake. State-of-the-art design covers how tools must be built regardless of provider: parity between online and offline participation, disclosed and human-supervised AI, and participation formats chosen to fit the objective. Foundation conditions cover the investments no single tool can deliver alone, from permanent funding for participation operations and treating platforms as trust-sensitive public infrastructure, to civic and digital literacy and credible public-interest alternatives to big tech.
One principle runs through all ten: a common European baseline, implemented along country-specific paths. The recommendations are designed for direct uptake into procurement, regulatory and funding instruments, and are offered as a contribution to the operationalisation of the European Democracy Shield and as an input to the work of the European Centre for Democratic Resilience.
The full brief, including the evidence behind each recommendation, is available open access. For more on INNOVADE and our role in the project, see our project page.