The European Citizens’ Initiative

There is a website, where European citizens can give ideas about new laws that the European Union should do. You can start suggesting your ideas for laws from 1 April 2012. If you manage to get enough support from other people living in the European Union,  the European Commission will check if it can make these laws. More information is available here. However, the website is not easy to read. So you may need support to understand it.

The European Commission has launched a website, which will soon permit European citizens to propose legislation that they think it is necessary. The European citizens’ initiative is an invitation to the European Commission to propose legislation in policy areas where the EU has competence to legislate.

All European citizens, who are old enough to vote in European Parliament elections, have the right to organise such initiatives starting by forming a citizen’s committee composed of 7 EU citizens minimum, living in at least 7 different EU countries. The committee will be managing the initiative onwards. Although organisations are not allowed to run such initiatives, they can still promote or sponsor initiatives with the condition that they will do it with full transparency.

Upon confirmation of the registration of an initiative, the citizen has one year to collect statements of support from other citizens. Provided that the initiative has received the required number of statements of support, the initiative can be submitted to the European Commission, which has 3 months to examine it.

More precisely:

• the Commission representatives will meet the organisers so that they can explain in detail their proposal
• the organisers will have an opportunity to present their initiative at a public hearing in the European Parliament;
• following a careful examination of the initiative, the Commission will adopt a formal response spelling out what action it intends to take, if any, and its reasons.

If the Commission decides to put forward a legislative proposal in response to a citizens’ initiative, the normal legislative procedure kicks off. The Commission proposal is submitted to the legislator (the European Parliament and the Council or in some cases only the Council), which will need to adopt it for it to become law.

However, the Regulation setting out the procedures and conditions for the citizens’ initiative is expected to  get applied on 1 April 2012. After that, European citizens could start launching their initiatives. Meanwhile, those who are interested in submitting their proposals for legislation can get informed about the procedure in the website of The European citizens’ initiative.