European Citizens' Initiative

Response by Mehr Demokratie e.V. on the EU Commission’s Green Book on the European Citizens’ Initiative

Mehr Demokratie was involved in the process which led to the inclusion of the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) in the Constitutional Treaty/Reform Treaty1 and welcomes the Commission’s efforts towards making the Initiative available to citizens as soon as possible by means of a Regulation. We share the view that the ECI offers significant possibilities for the development of European civil society and of a European public space, and thus for democracy itself at the EU level - as long as the Commission, as the intended recipient of such initiatives, makes active use of the opportunity the ECI presents for engaging intensively with the citizens. For we also see considerable risks if the expectations and hopes for the use of this new instrument were to be disappointed as a consequence of the imposition of impractical procedural rules.

Based on our extensive practical experience with direct democracy, we therefore offer this response as a contribution to the hoped-for user-friendliness of the ECI.

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