European Citizens´ Initiative


In December 2009 the Lisbon Treaty finally entered into force. It aims to make the European Union more democratic and introduced a new form of participatory democracy by article 11.4. With this article the Treaty of Lisbon paved the way for the European Citizens´ Initiative (ECI) which grants more rights of direct democracy to the citizens of the EU.

The ECI enables one million citizens from at least seven EU Member States to ask the European Commission to put forward proposals for European legislation within its powers. On 16 February 2011 the European Parliament and the Council adopted a regulation which further defines the rules and procedure to start a European Citizens´I Initiative.

JEF's activities in this framework

JEF has been active on the issue of the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) since early 2010 in an effort to make this instrument as flexible and user-friendly as possible for future use, inject more democracy in the EU and thus bring the Citizens and European decision-makers closer to each other.

The final Regulation that was published in the Official Journal in February 2011 was clearly bend towards JEF's original key demands that were formulated as early as April 2010. The first ECI proposal can be registred from 1 April 2012 onwards and JEF is warming up its entire network to be ready!

An article on the TNF provides a short summary of JEF's engagement and reflects on the next steps that federalist should take in order to make practical use of the ECI and campaign for a political issue that can drive the federalist agenda forward.

Click also here for more info on JEF's achievements and entire campaigning history of JEF's involvement.

After having lobbied for the ECI, JEF should now determine if the organisation should launch an ECI by itself.

JEF's role in launching such an initiative

Even if Citizens' initiatives must be organised by citizens' committees composed of at least 7 citizens residing in at least 7 different Member States and the members of the citizens' committee shall be citizens of the Union and if organisations cannot organise citizens' initiatives, any entity can promote or support proposed initiatives provided that it does so with full transparency. So we could propose an idea for an ECI which will be formally launched by JEF members in order to meet the EU regulation.

Steps to be taken

JEF Europe would preferably like to take a decision already at its European Congress next October and agree on the 'framework and process' for registering the ECI (contacts with partners, the elaboration of the legal proposal content-wise, gathering 7 people who would like to register the proposal, etc.).

In order to take a decision, JEF-Europe invites its members to complete a survey which aims to get a grasp of JEF-members´ stance towards an ECI, its scope and content.

Click here to access the survey ! 

Join JEF!

JEF Sections

Search