Ever dreamed of goading the European Union into passing new legislation? From Sunday, residents will be able to do so for the first time - provided they manage to rally 1 million people to their cause, that is. The European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) was foreseen by the Lisbon Treaty, the rulebook the EU has lived by since 2009. The introduction of the new right to petition was delayed until April 1 of this year so member states could set up the necessary mechanisms.
The ECI has been described as "the world's only transnational tool of direct democracy." "This is an unprecedented expansion in participatory democracy," said EU Institutional Affairs Commissioner Maros Sefcovic. "It is a new opportunity to set the agenda of the EU debate," added Denmark's minister for European affairs, Nicolai Wammen - whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency. "When 1 million citizens have spoken, it will be noticed."
It does not guarantee them new legislation, however. An ECI can only be registered with the European Commission - the first step in the process - if it is brought forward by a citizens' committee featuring a minimum of seven EU citizens residing in at least seven different member states.
Some proposals are bound to prove controversial, with initiatives already being floated on gay marriage, research involving human embryos, nuclear power and climate change. A financial transaction tax that is dividing member states could also be a subject for a petition, European Parliament President Martin Schulz suggested on Wednesday.
Petitions that are "outside the scope of the commission's powers" or are "manifestly abusive, frivolous, vexatious (or) contrary to European values" will not be accepted for registration. Once an initiative is registered, its proponents then have a year to collect the 1 million signatures. They must also stem from at least seven EU countries.
The requirements are in place to avoid, among other things, a "hijacking" of the process by lobby groups, big business or non-governmental organisations, a spokesman for Sefcovic said. At the end of it all, the commission does not have to follow through with the demanded legislation. It is only required to give "serious consideration" to the proposal during a period of up to three months, complete with a hearing before the European Parliament.
"There's a lot of ideas floating around," Sefcovic noted. "If you would see that this particular proposal is backed by a million or millions of people, there is no way the decision-makers, the politicians or high civil servants ... can overlook it." The rejection of an initiative cannot be appealed. But the EU legislature could revive killed proposals, the lawmaker in charge of the ECI dossier indicated in an internal e-mail on Friday. "The European Parliament will have the power to pick up the baton, through existing procedures, in order to restore to its agenda topics that, according to its members, should be the subject of inter-institutional legislative dialogue," wrote Georgios Papastamkos.
At the very least, the new tool will help bridge the often chastised gap between EU decision-makers and citizens, said Joseph Daul, the chairman of the largest political grouping in the EU legislature. "I see this initiative as a good opportunity for us ... to get closer to Europeans generally, to understand their needs and how to improve their daily lives," Daul said. "This is also a chance for citizens to provide an extra check on the legislative process."
But Papastamkos acknowledged that the new tool "could have an unpredictable impact on EU rule-making." Some groups have expressed scepticism about its success given that citizens will have to provide personal data to sign up to an initiative. Greenpeace spoke of a "useful but flawed tool."
The environmental group already has experience in putting pressure on the EU through a petition, having gathered one million signatures in 2010 calling for a stop to the authorisation of new genetically modified crops. Past petitions cannot retrospectively be considered an ECI. "The citizens' initiative is a good idea in principle," Greenpeace EU director Jorgo Riss said in a statement. "But in reality, one million euros will go a lot further to lobby the commission than one million signatures."
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