Our study “Democratic Values as Understood in Europe in the Metaverse”.

This study was prepared by our Foundation Metaverse Europe in collaboration with Stiftung Zukunft.

This exploratory study explores challenges and opportunities for democracy in the metaverse and presents areas for deeper work. Accordingly, democracy could be threatened in the future by the implementation of the vision of a centralized, private-sector metaverse in the three areas of fundamental rights, the public sphere, and democratic processes and procedures. Since the technology is currently not yet ready for the implementation of a metaverse that corresponds to a comprehensive lifeworld, the longer-term option here is to develop our own European structures in the next ten to 15 years. But democracy can also be secured in the medium term through standards and regulation. Even now, when setting up and running Metaversen, it seems sensible to use existing EU digital regulation as a framework, define your own democratic processes, and reflect design decisions and community rules. The unifying element across all application areas and time horizons is the strengthening of the education and competence of citizens for an informed and critical use of this new technology.