The Treaty of Lisbon adds a whole new dimension of participatory democracy to the European Union next to that of representative democracy. The
European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) enables one million citizens from a range of countries to come together and call directly on the Commission to take action on an issue that is important to them.
Currently, the Commission and the Presidency are working on the exact implementation of the European Citizens’ Initiative, the requirement and how the procedure to start an ECI should exactly look.
LYMEC President
Aloys Rigaut comments: "We of course welcome the swift introduction of the European Citizens’ Initiative. It will help to bridge the gap between the European Union and its citizens, and will make our democracy stronger. But we can simply not accept that EU citizens are not treated equally by requiring that signatures should come from 'a significant number of Member States'. If we want this new tool to be successful, we need to make it as easy as possible to understand and use, rather than filling it in with such technocratic hurdles. Our focus is and should remain the user, the citizen."
LYMEC Vice President Alexander Plahr adds: "Proposals like fixing a 2% threshold per member state when collecting signatures for the initiative are clearly the opposite of making the process simple! For example, 2% of Spain's population would be around 940.000 people. The same goes for ex-ante procedures to filter the legal nature of the initiative (before starting to collect the signatures).
We all knew that this new mechanism would not place the EU in the camps of California or Switzerland when it comes to direct democracy, but if this whole project shall not end up with even more frustration than before, no restrictive measures must be implemented. Europe’s citizens need a low-threshold initiative!"
