Elise Fleury is the Campaign Lead at Eurogroup for Animals for the European citizens’ initiative Fur Free Europe. The Initiative calls on the EU to ban fur farms and ban farmed fur products from the European market. The ECI gathered 1 502 319 verified signatures across the European Union and exceeded the required thresholds in eighteen Member States. In this interview for the European Citizens’ Initiative Forum, recorded in November 2023 while the organisers were awaiting the response of the European Commission, Elise Fleury outlines the motivation behind the Initiative, the key factors for the success of the campaign and the challenges facing Initiative organisers.
NB: The Commission’s reply to this ECI was published on 7 December 2023.
Elise Fleury: We know that citizens really care about animal welfare. This has been proven by several Eurobarometers like the one that the Commission released (in October 2023) that really shows that citizens want to see an end to the unnecessary suffering of the animals. When it comes to fur, we know that this suffering is happening for nonessential products. Today it is not needed to wear real fur to be able to live your life as a normal citizen.
Source: Eurobarometer
On top of the suffering of the animals, the fur also has an impact on issues such as the environment, the climate but also public health, as we saw with the Covid outbreaks in mink farms. For all those reasons we believe that this is really a strong citizens' call and that we will gather the support that is needed. This has been the case so far, because we have collected 1.5 million signatures, and we see that citizens are continuously calling for this ECI to be successful.
Q: How do you decide to choose the European Citizens’ Initiative as a tool?
Elise Fleury: We gained quite some experience with European citizens' initiatives in the past because Eurogroup for Animals has been supportive of past initiatives such as 'End the Cage Age' and 'Save Cruelty Free Cosmetics', so we did see that it can lead to some positive impact. Of course, the ECI tool only exists since 10 years and the most successful ECIs have only happened in the last two to three years, so it is quite a recent tool and we still need to see with some time the final impact of such a tool, and if it's really democratic.
Save Cruelty-Free Cosmetics: We chose an ECI because it has meaning, and it has force!
The European citizens’ initiative 'End the Cage Age' really got a very positive response and commitment from the European Commission. We could see that the Commission was listening to citizens through this democratic tool, so this is why we went for our ECI 'Fur Free Europe'. Eurogroup for Animals is used to running campaigns at the EU level, but when the Commission does not want to get involved, it can easily disregard other European campaigns. By using the European Citizens’ Initiative, and with the experience of the ECI 'End the Cage Age', we thought that this would be the right tool to get a clear response from the European Commission.
Q: What was your experience with the ECI process?
Elise Fleury: In terms of the registration process, we were very well supported by the Commission, and we were very well accompanied throughout the entire processes, not only with the registration but also with the verification and the submission. We did our own assessment with external legal advisors, so we did not seek any specific services from the European Commission or from the ECI Forum when it comes to the legal basis or also the campaigning tactics, but nevertheless we knew that it was there in case we would have any questions.
Q: What were your main challenges?
Elise Fleury: While the European Citizens’ Initiative is supposed to be a democratic tool, it is still a very, very challenging campaign to run, because the threshold is quite high. First of all, you may think that one million (signatures) is quite easy to achieve throughout the EU, but we're talking about validated signatures, ant this means that actually you need to set your targets much higher. We worked with an initial target of 1.5 million signatures to be collected, and to get that is actually quite difficult. You need to make sure that you have sufficient budget, but also enough support from your network. This means not just having some organisations committing to support your European citizens’ initiative once it is launched, but really having a true commitment that they will be very active from day one until the end. We had the active support of 80 organisations throughout the EU. You need to make sure that this support comes not only from specific Member States, but that you have a wider geographical outreach. It is important for your initiative to show that there is political support throughout the EU and not just in a few Member States, so to wrap up I would say:
get really well prepared, don't rush to go for a European citizens’ initiative, because it is costly in terms of money, but also in terms of human resources. Get well prepared, get the funds, get the support, and just go for it once you're sure that you can really get to your 1.5 million signature target.
Read also:
Mastering the Art of Budgeting: the key to success with your European citizens' initiative campaign
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