European Citizens' Initiative: Heads we win, tails you lose

From: morningstaronline.co.uk Wednesday 26 January 2011 by Steve McGiffen


It is claimed by its supporters that the Lisbon Treaty has extended democracy within the European Union, helped to close the democratic deficit and returned power to the peoples of Europe. One of the things on which their assertion rests is the so-called European Citizens' Initiative (ECI), via which a petition carrying one million signatures represents an officially recognised call on the European Commission to bring forward new policy proposals.

What worries me about this is not so much that the commission exaggerates the contribution which the ECI might make to democratising the European Union, but the fact that, once again, it shows that European decision-makers, just like their counterparts at national level, have not the slightest conception of what democracy is.


Worse still, they are far from alone in this, which is of course why they get away with it. Even people normally critical of the EU have welcomed the ECI as a step in the right direction. In fact, it is precisely the opposite. Article 11 Paragraph 4 of the treaty states: "Not less than one million citizens who are nationals of a significant number of member states may take the initiative of inviting the European Commission, within the framework of its powers, to submit any appropriate proposal on matters where citizens consider that a legal act of the union is required for the purpose of implementing the treaties."The "significant number" has now been defined as a quarter of the total, which as things stand means seven. A number of other details have also been filled in:

The right to present a petition will not begin until 2012.
The organisers must be a "citizens' committee" consisting of a minimum of seven citizens resident in seven different member states and they must collect their signatures in a single year.

These signatures must also come from at least seven member states, with a minimum threshold for each of them of 750 times the number of MEPs to which that country is entitled. (For the UK, this works out at 5,400).

The commission then has three months to decide how to respond.

The only grounds for an ECI, however, are that a new law is needed 'for the purpose of implementing the treaties.'

No question then of changing these treaties.

Only matters over which the commission has the ability to act - "competence" in the EU jargon - can be addressed. So, for example, the ludicrous waste of money involved in moving the entire European Parliament from Brussels to Strasbourg once a month cannot be the subject of an ECI. Nor can the fact that the staff of the various EU institutions receive salaries and benefits which, were they applied to anyone else, would be seen as "undermining competitiveness."

You could conceivably get up an ECI on, say, discrimination against migrant workers from outside the EU but none of the intended beneficiaries of your initiative would be able to sign it as no signatures will be valid which come from anyone who is not a national of a member state.

The commission has, moreover, no obligation to make any proposal whatsoever in response to an ECI.

Officially it is committed only to examine the text to see whether a new policy proposal would be appropriate.

Any petition seen by the commission as "frivolous, abusive or vexatious" will be deemed ineligible.

The commission will have the right, also, to reject any ECI deemed to be "against the values of the union."

While this will exclude racists, there is no saying who else might fall under the commission's definition of "extremist," a term used in this context in explanatory notes on the new system.

Let's say that, despite all this, someone reading this decides that for all these drawbacks, it might be worth trying to get up an ECI on, say, some form of gender discrimination in employment.

For the most part initiatives in this area would be likely to fall within the rules as Lisbon does speak of "ensuring full equality in practice between men and women in working life" and the commission has responsibility for upholding the treaties.

Nevertheless, barriers remain in the way of your ECI.

Your petition will not go directly to the commission but to your own national authorities which may determine whether or not all the signatories are valid.

If you want to win support across the required seven countries, you will have to have your text translated into the languages of those countries.

Of course, activists may be willing to do this for free, but it will be vitally important to ensure that the seven or more texts match precisely.

The commission, you can be sure, will be looking for any excuse to bin your ECI.

Once you've jumped through all these hoops, the commission will have a time-limit of three months to respond.

They will invite the organisers to discuss the matter and a public hearing will be organised at the European Parliament though whether any reimbursement of expenses will be available is not stated.

As I said at the beginning, this is a consultative process and therefore nothing to do with democracy, which is a system in which the people have the right to determine how they are governed, not to be consulted about it.

In pre-democratic times people who lacked any political rights, usually the poor, women, Jews and other ethnic minorities, generally had the right to petition the king for redress of grievances.

Occasionally, in his wisdom and generosity, he would grant their petition.

Real democracy involves the creation of powerful institutions respondent to the popular will.

The European Union has undermined the powers of elected institutions transferring them to unelected bodies such as the commission and the European Central Bank.

The Lisbon Treaty itself was imposed on the peoples of Europe.

Far from being democratic, it increases the power of technocrats, bureaucrats and major corporations at the expense of elected parliaments and elected governments.

The gimmicky European Citizens' Initiative does nothing whatsoever to redress this.