MORE INITIATIVES FOR EUROPE’S CITIZENS

The European Citizens’ Initiative aims to make the EU more democratic, transparent and citizen-friendly. But many of the hopes originally pinned on this promising young instrument remain unfulfilled. In addition to the tool’s perceived bureaucratic hurdles and technical deficits, it lacks the required publicity to have genuine impact. In the EU, the media writes more about the democratic deficit than about the European Citizens’ Initiative. This lack of publicity is a barrier for successful engagement with the EU policy-making processes at work.

A few months ago, the European Commission submitted a reform proposal that many had long been calling for. The proposal aims to leverage the entire potential of the participatory tool by making it easier for citizens to put issues on the political agenda.

Finally more publicity? The European Parliament promises to play its part

The main aim of the European Citizens’ Initiative is to empower citizens to place issues on the agenda at EU-level in a bid to create publicity around the issue in question and achieve more impact at political level. An awareness-raising campaign will only have a minor impact on its own, but requires public debate around the issue to achieve any concrete change – this is true not just in Brussels, but across all countries of the EU. Consequently, all eyes are on the European Parliament to take up this challenge.

The Parliament is the central European forum in which citizens’ needs and concerns are openly discussed. It should therefore have a prominent role in the follow-up of successful European Citizens’ Initiatives. The good news from Brussels is that the Parliament has recently announced plans to table an amendment to its own Rules of Procedure, so as to ensure that public Parliamentary plenary debates can be held on successful initiatives.

This is a big step in the right direction. The European Parliament itself would benefit from these debates, too – it has all too often suffered from a lack of media attention in comparison to the European Commission over the years. However, many initiatives focus on disputed and controversial issues, providing an opportunity to make the European Citizens’ Initiative known to citizens as well as the European Parliament itself.

The institutional debate takes on a participatory focus

No matter how far-reaching the revised Regulation turns out to be, it will provide an opportunity for tangible improvements to be made to the rules governing the European Citizens’ Initiative. This will ensure that initiative registration and organisation is easier and more accessible for any and every EU citizen who wants to make use of the tool.

But it is about more than that – for the EU, this reform could mark the beginning of an increasingly open and transparent age, where it gives more weight to new forms of civic participation. Eventually, this could lead to a new “architecture of participation”, endowing Europe’s citizens with additional opportunities for participation and engagement. It is not just the European Citizens’ Initiative which is still far from having achieved its full democratic potential – it is also the EU itself!