The Founding White Paper
€15,000State of Citizen Initiative Infrastructure in Europe, 2026. 60–80 pages. All 27 member states. Open-licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Almost every European democracy guarantees, in constitutional language, the right of citizens to initiate referendums. Hungary: 200,000 signatures. Italy: 500,000. Spain: 500,000. Collected on paper. Verified by hand. Submitted in bound folios.
On paper, the right exists. In practice, it collapses under the operational weight of exercising it. Most initiatives don't fail on their merits — they fail because the infrastructure to exercise the right has never been built.
DEM·OS is the project to build that infrastructure. Open. Multi-jurisdictional. Integrating national digital identity systems and the EU Digital Identity Wallet under eIDAS 2.0. Free for any civic group to use. Open-source after MVP validation.
The Kickstarter · Q4 2026
One
Two
Three
A bounded campaign for three founding deliverables
The platform itself is an €1.8M, 18-month build funded by a European consortium — Horizon Europe, CERV 2026, OSF, and major democracy foundations. The Kickstarter is something different. It funds three specific outputs the institutional grants don't cover. €50,000 over 30 days.
The Open Design System
€15,000Complete parchment-and-ink visual identity, accessibility tokens, component library, brand book. Released for any civic-tech project to use.
Three Pro Bono Scan Assessments
€15,000Real civic groups in Hungary, Italy, and one country chosen by backer vote. 30-page written reports. Published case studies.
Pre-launch list
Be on the page when we go live
The Kickstarter launches Q4 2026. Backers on the pre-launch list typically pledge in the first 24 hours — the window that determines whether the algorithm carries the campaign for the rest of the 30 days. Five emails before launch. Three updates during. Nothing else.
No marketing. No third-party sharing. Unsubscribe with one click. GDPR-compliant by design.
From the workshop
Latest updates
Public-facing notes on what we're building, what we've learned, what's next. Roughly one post per week through pre-launch.
-
A right that almost no one can exercise Why we're building DEM·OS, what the Kickstarter funds, and what comes after.
·
The project at a glance
DEM·OS by the numbers
Platform build budget
€1.8M over 18 months
Kickstarter target
€50,000 in 30 days
National eID systems integrated
10 + EUDI Wallet
EU member states covered
27 via Track A platform
Hungarian programme
Track B lobby + paper workflow
Advisory board
Independent non-partisan · audited
About
Who builds DEM·OS
The founding team brings fifteen years across Central European civic infrastructure, EU funding processes, legal advocacy, and product development. The independent advisory board — formed Q3 2026 — will include representatives from the Pázmány–Andrássy Joint Research Group on Participatory Democracy, civic-tech leaders from Estonia and Italy, and a Brussels-based EU policy advisor.
We are non-partisan by design and by published commitment, audited annually by an independent body whose findings are published in full. In polarized political environments, the appearance of neutrality is harder than the practice. We will defend it with transparency and with action, not with slogans.
We are not building a movement. We are building the infrastructure a movement can run on, when it forms.
DEM·OS — Democratiæ Operandi Systema. The operating system of European democracy.