Lessons learnt from the eight years’ experience of the European Citizens’ Initiative

Over its first years, the European citizens' initiative has been defining itself, taking shape. I think that it is also becoming more concrete in terms of the purposes that it can serve as a participatory tool on the list of EU's agenda setting channels. It is clear that the ECI is not an instrument to make quick changes. It is a long process and the advantage of it is that the organisers and the institutions have both enough time to get to know each other, cross-check their objectives, get ready for a potential change. The ECI can bring about a deep compromise on various legal issues if its full potential is reached and if it is interpreted as a positive tool in the legislative life-cycle. My main observation is yet another one, more on the side of the soft competences. I have been lucky to observe the ECI from the institutional perspective since its early years. It has always been clear that, by name and by default, the ECI belongs to the citizens, but the citizens do not act in the void. They also choose this instrument to influence, affect, raise interest and to achieve it, lots of different stakeholders need to show interest and support. That is why my main lesson learnt in this comment will be "cooperation". Even though the ECI belongs to the EU citizens – which literary means – to all of us, there is still a room for improvement in terms of cooperation between the institutions themselves, between the civil society organisations, between ECI organisers and between the national governments. Depending on the competence, the institutions want to make visible their own way of supporting the ECI, the civil society organisations want to prove to their members their own individual contributions, etc. but the real fact is that ECI can only be successful if those individual citizens, who believe in their cause, get the same help regardless of the initial contact point that they turn to. On the institutional side, things have been improving – we've created an inter-institutional network of ECI administrators to regularly exchange information, but it is only a shy beginning. I am observing that on the civil society side a deeper understanding of the value of cooperation is also being born, because the fact is that no individual organisation can help all the ECIs. Active citizens take action everywhere, they find shorter or longer ways to find the ECI contact in the institution, the ECI networks or the ECI Forum. Therefore my lesson learnt (and my wish) for the ECI is more friendly and transparent cooperation and a dense network of ECI community to promote active and well informed citizenship.

One learning point (or more a reminder) from the ECI experience is how important the Member states are. An example is that France removed its burdensome id requirements at the end of last year, which has had a big impact on ECI in that country. There are still other improvements member states could make in terms of administration of the ECI, and they also need to do a lot more positive promotion of the ECI. Steps have been taken at member state level, but if the ECI is to fulfil its potential it is not just the EU institutions that need to continue to evolve their approach. It is more important that member states fully accept and promote the ECI.

The European Citizens’ Initiative can be simpler to browse local initiatives – the municipal initiative service

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