Regional actors supporting the European Citizens' Initiative

There is a substantial untapped potential of regional stakeholders in terms of supporting organisers of European citizens' initiatives. In addition to promoting the European Citizens’ Initiative as a tool, there are at least three areas, in which regional actors can make a positive difference.

Firstly, they can implement themselves or support and facilitate the implementation of concrete measures to bridge the digital divide at local level, such as ensuring access to the online space for everyone and investing in digital skills and competencies. In an increasingly digitalizing world, the digital divide challenge seems to be growing in importance and needs to be addressed in a comprehensive manner if we want to avoid having “first and second class” citizens.

Secondly, regional actors can promote concrete European citizens' initiatives by providing information and displaying calls for  statements of support on regional websites, including those of the municipalities; by helping organisers to tailor their messages to the specificities of the regions and the concrete needs of its citizens at local level and organising discussions on the subjects of the initiatives. This will contribute to both the development of the European public sphere and the strengthening of the European citizenship.

Last but not least, regional decision-makers can follow up the European citizens' initiatives by implementing regional solutions in response to the citizens' demands, regardless of whether the initiatives have succeeded in gathering one million statements of support or not. Often, the most effective problem-solving actions, which make a huge difference in citizens’ lives are the practical ones implemented on the ground, even without adopting new legislation.

Regional and local actors could join the debate around those European citizens’ initiatives of particular relevance to their region. Looking at current and past initiatives, we can see plenty of direct interest to the regions related for example to: the rights of Europeans to vote in local elections, the provision of basic public services, environmental, transport and mobility issues, cohesion policy and so on. Some of them never made it to EU decision-makers’ table because they did not manage to reach the 1 million signatures requirement.

Regional and local actors could also contribute to making the European Citizens’ Initiative better known within their communities. This will enable their fellow citizens to play an active role in the EU democratic and political life.

Regional actors certainly have a role to play in raising awareness of, supporting and promoting the ECI. There is significant untapped potential for regional actors, as Assya Kavrakova has mentioned, and I agree that supporting civic digital skills, making the European public sphere more accessible and the implementation of regional solutions are all important steps in this process. Moreover, as Adriana-Nicoleta Mungiu Patrascu mentions, previous and past initiatives can demonstrate some of the benefits of local and regional actors to us, including previous successful initiatives.

Initiatives that have reached the 1,000,000 signature threshold have often benefited from mobilising local civil society. The Stop Vivisection ECI, for example, made huge strides in gaining statements of support thanks to its ability to mobilise local networks of civil society organisations around a common cause. The same can be said of the Right2Water ECI, which drew upon enormous support from the mobilisation of small grassroots water movement groups, especially in some of the countries hit hardest by the financial crisis. Local knowledge of communities can, in this sense, prove invaluable to promoting an initiative and making causes tangible to citizens at a grassroots level. 

Regional decision-makers can also play an important role in raising awareness of the ECI tool by supporting and strengthening civic and political education. The lack of awareness and basic knowledge of the ECI can still be considered one of the obstacles that impedes higher civic engagement with the participatory democratic instrument. An important means of engaging citizens with democratic processes, be it at a regional, national or European level, has to be education and many regional decision-makers across Europe have legislative competence in this area. In formal education, it could therefore be beneficial to the ECI to invest in and support political and civic education, especially in the field of European democracy, to ensure that EU democratic processes are discussed and explored in schools and educational institutions alongside regional and national democratic processes. Beyond formal education, non-formal educational projects and voluntary initiatives can also have a huge impact in empowering citizens to make use of democratic instruments at their disposal. This is particularly pertinent in the case of boosting youth engagement with the ECI at a grassroots level, where the presence and support of young people promoting the tool could prove invaluable in making learning about the ECI interactive, fun and informative. 

Ultimately, regional actors tend to be those who understand the unique complexities, contexts and needs of their communities best. Because of this, ECI Organisers should not underestimate the benefits of contextualising ECIs at a local level and tapping into the knowledge and relationships of regional actors with their local communities.

Thank you for opening this important thread. In the next hours we will publish on the blog an article about the way how as promoters of the European Citizens Initiative Stopglobalwarming.eu we engaged with local municipalities and regions. 



In our case, we have created a template of a local resolution that can be adopted by Cities and Regions to support the intiaitive in two ways: 



1) Endorsement of the matter that is object of the ECI, in our case the Carbon Pricing in teh European Union 

2) The Committment of the local administration to inform citizens of their rights to sign European Citizens Initiatives 



I copy and paste below the content of the Local Motion so that you can get a sense of how this was structured. 



Currently to implement this type of action, we had to rely on activists to identify their counterparts within the administration. 



But what would be really interesting is to find ways to commit Regions and Cities to this type of informative service, for example replicating what is done in terms of institutional communication in Switzerland: direct mailing and constant updates on participatory democracy instruments among the citizens. 



There would be three benefits in such an approach: 

1) Increase the information among EU citizens of their rights to take part in shaping EU Policies 

2) Support citizens committee that don't rely on existing databases of private data - making the whole campaigning more efficient and support the activation of the local-level debate which is necessary to improve the European public spehere 

3) Creating an opportunity for local journalists to be more aware of what is participatory democracy in the European Union 



Last but not least, I think the Committee of the Regions and the European Economic and Social Committee could liaise with Regions and Municipalities to offer opportunities for the promotion of European Citizens Initiatives. 



I think this methodology and the fostering of collaboration around this goal could be the subject of an ECI Day Best practice Session. 



Hope we can build together on this! 







 

In order to collect 1 million signatures in the European Union, it is important that as many citizens as possible are informed about their right to sign and support European Citizens’ Initiatives, the only participatory Democracatic instrument available to citizens to make official proposals to the European Commission.

This is the basic text for a “StopGlobalWarming.eu motion” that you can promote within your Municipality or Regional Council.

You can directly contact the Mayor, the City Council or individual City Councillors to propose it to them. 

STOPGLOBALWARMING.EU MOTION AND INFORMATION PROVISION TO CITIZENS ON EUROPEAN CITIZENS’ INITIATIVES

Whereas

European institutions recently put Carbon Pricing on their agenda to efficiently fight climate change;

The Von der Leyen Commission included a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism in its proposal for the European Green Deal;

The German Presidency of the Council of the EU is willing to propose a moderate minimum Carbon Price and to expand it to all sectors, beyond the European Emission Trading System;

The negotiation on the Multiannual Financial Framework, and on the Recovery Fund, reached by the Heads of State and Government of the European Union on July 21st 2020, foresees that during the first semester of 2021 the European Commission proposes a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism as a basis for the EU’s own resources.

Noted that

Such an initiative is perfectly consistent with the global goals of the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda 

The City Council/Municipal/Regional Council of XXX

Commits 

The President of the City Council and the Councillor for Environment to:

Inform citizens on the initiative;

Enable citizens to sign the StopGlobalWarming.eu initiative at the relevant and competent offices;

Publish on the City/Municipal/… website the www.StopGlobalWarming.eu link;

Take action to support the objectives of the European Citizens’ Initiative within the City Administration, towards national and regional authorities, but also in relation to other Municipalities and national and European cities;

Produce a report for the City Council on the activities carried out, by (one month before the deadline of the signatures collection). 

I see a completely different issue, namely the awareness of the European Citizens’ Initiative. It would be much easier for EU citizens to be more aware of this democratic instrument. The European Union would need to provide much more information to the public.

The European Citizens’ Initiative can make it easier to browse local initiatives – Your citizens’ initiative

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Dear all, 

I would like to update you on the further steps that as European Citizens Initiative organisers we did on this matter. 



- With the StopGlobalWarming.eu ECI (A price for carbon to fight climate change) we launched "Mayors to stopglobalwarming.eu - Assembly of European Mayors to fight climate change through participatory democracy". 

This is the Italian event and the explanation of what we are now doing in Europe (next appointment will be on the 22nd of March - to be announced soon) https://eumans.eu/mayors-stopglobalwarmingeu-italian-launch-and-next-steps



- With the promoters of other ECIs we sent a letter to Commissioner Jourova (CCing also those EU Bodies and organisations which have "power of information") to ask for ordinary and extraordinary measures of information on European Citizens Initiatives - after the third extension of the terms of collection of signatures we cannot deny any further that there is a lack of awareness among European citizens on their own rights to sign 

https://eumans.eu/its-time-ordinary-and-extraordinary-measures-participatory-democracy-european-union-letter-commissioner



Thursday 25th of February at 6 PM CET during the EUMANS weekly meeting we will discuss this proposals and further actions with other ECI promoters and citizens and activists interested in the topic. You are more than welcome to join https://www.eumans.eu/eumans-weekly-meeting