INNOVADE Holding Democracy Together: A common European baseline for trustworthy digital democracy in Europe (Policy Brief)

'Holding Democracy Together: A common European baseline for trustworthy digital democracy in Europe' is a policy brief drawing on 18 months of consortium research — a citizen survey of more than 400 respondents, a questionnaire of 67 public officials, a structured mapping of 141 digital democracy platforms, an international expert survey of 331 specialists, twenty country-level legal and security interviews, and validation through real-world Living Labs. The brief sets out ten recommendations for the trustworthy development and deployment of digital democracy tools across Europe. The recommendations are organised around three categories — the Support Pillars that any initiative must put in place before launch, the State-of-the-Art Design obligations that govern how tools must be built, and the Foundation Conditions that no single tool can deliver alone — and are unified by a single guiding principle: a common European baseline, implemented along country-specific pathways. Published as the European Democracy Shield enters its implementation phase, the brief is intended as INNOVADE's research-backed contribution to the institutional actors now shaping the next chapter of European democratic resilience.