The People-first Playbook

The People-First Playbook reframes Europe’s Digital Single Market (DSM) through the perspective of the people who use it: entrepreneurs, workers, patients, students, and consumers. It argues that the DSM’s effectiveness and legitimacy depend not only on regulatory alignment or technological capacity, but on how individuals experience their interactions and empowerment in Europe’s digital environment.

Calls for simplification and competitiveness will only succeed if the next phase of integration restores coherence at the level of lived experience. A digital market that works for institutions but not for people risks building digital sovereignty without legitimacy.

The study was commissioned and funded by Sitra.