Explanatory Memorandum to COM(2010)119 - Citizens’ initiative - Main contents
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| dossier | COM(2010)119 - Citizens’ initiative. |
|---|---|
| source | COM(2010)119  |
| date | 31-03-2010 |
The Treaty on European Union introduces a whole new dimension of participatory democracy alongside that of representative democracy on which the Union is founded. It reinforces the citizenship of the Union and recognizes every citizen's right to participate in the democratic life of the Union. It enshrines the key standards of civil dialogue to which the institutions must live up to and codifies the Commission's existing practice of carrying out broad public consultations. And, above all, it introduces an important innovation in the democratic functioning of the Union by providing a citizens' initiative right whereby one million citizens may invite the Commission to bring forward certain legislative proposals.
This new provision is a significant step forward in the democratic life of the Union. It provides a singular opportunity to bring the Union closer to the citizens and to foster greater cross-border debate about EU policy issues, by bringing citizens from a range of countries together in supporting one specific issue.
It is important to underline however that the citizens' initiative is an agenda setting initiative. Whilst it does not affect the Commission's right of initiative, it will, however, oblige the Commission, as a college, to give serious consideration to the requests made by citizens' initiatives.
The key features of the citizens' initiative are enshrined in the Treaty. In particular the Treaty requires that the signatories of a citizens' initiative should number at least one million and that they should come from a significant number of Member States. The initiative must also be within the framework of the Commission's powers and must concern matters where citizens consider that a legal act of the Union is required in order to implement the Treaties.
However, the Treaty leaves it up to the European Parliament and the Council, acting in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure, to set out in a Regulation the procedures and conditions for how the citizens' initiative will function in practice.
In order to seize the opportunity provided by this new provision and give it its full potential, the procedures and conditions for the citizens' initiative need to facilitate its use whilst ensuring that the spirit of the Treaty provisions is respected.
The guiding principles for this proposal are therefore as follows:
– The conditions should ensure that citizens' initiatives are representative of a Union interest, whilst ensuring that the instrument remains easy to use.
– The procedures should be simple and user-friendly, whilst preventing fraud or abuse of the system and they should not impose unnecessary administrative burdens on the Member States.
Contents
- RESULTS OF CONSULTATIONS WITH THE INTERESTED PARTIES
- 2.1. General considerations
- 2.2. Ensuring that citizens' initiatives are representative of a Union interest
- 2.3. Requirements for the collection and verification of statements of support
- 2.4. Examination of initiatives by the Commission
- 3. MAIN ELEMENTS OF THE PROPOSAL
- 3.1. Minimum number of Member States (Article 7)
- 3.2. Minimum number of citizens per Member State (Article 7 and Annex I)
- 3.3. Minimum age (Article 3(2))
- 3.4. Registration of proposed initiatives (Article 4)
- 3.5. Procedures and conditions for the collection of statements of support (Articles 5 and 6)
- 3.6. Time-limit for the collection of statements of support (Article 5(4))
- 3.7. Decision on the admissibility of proposed citizens' initiatives (Article 8)
- 3.8. Requirements for the verification and authentication of statements of support (Article 9)
- 3.9. Examination of a citizens' initiative by the Commission (Article 11)
- 3.10. Personal data protection (Article 12)
- 3.11. Revision of the annexes and review clause (Articles 16 and 21)
Given the importance of this new provision of the Treaty for citizens, civil society and stakeholders across the EU and considering the complexity of some of the issues to be addressed, the Commission launched a broad public consultation with the adoption of a Green Paper on 11 November 2009 i. The consultation elicited over 300 replies from a broad range of stakeholders, including individual citizens, organisations and public authorities. A public hearing was also held for all respondents to the Green Paper on 22 February 2010 in Brussels.
The responses to the Green Paper underlined the need for the procedures and conditions for the citizens' initiative to be simple, user-friendly and accessible to all EU citizens and that they should be proportionate to the nature of the citizens' initiative.
The responses also confirmed that a number of requirements are necessary in order to ensure that the instrument remains credible and is not abused and that these requirements should ensure uniform conditions for supporting a citizens' initiative across the EU.
As regards the minimum number of Member States from which citizens supporting a citizens' initiative must come, many respondents agreed that one third of Member States was an appropriate threshold. There was also considerable support, mainly amongst organisations for a lower threshold, primarily for one quarter of Member States.
In addition, the responses confirmed the need for signatories of a citizens' initiative to comprise at least a minimum number of citizens coming from each of those Member States. Many respondents agreed that 0.2% of the population was an appropriate threshold. Others considered that the threshold should be lower arguing that the purpose should be to prevent abuse but that it should not be seen as a barrier to presenting an initiative. Finally, a number of respondents advocated an altogether different approach to setting the threshold, arguing that a set percentage for all Member States is not equitable, as it is much easier, for instance, to collect statements of support from 1 000 citizens (representing 0.2% of the population) in Luxembourg than 160 000 in Germany, and therefore easier to count small Member States than large ones.
Respondents broadly support the idea of having a common set of procedural requirements for the collection and verification of statements of support so as to ensure a uniform process across the EU and to avoid organisers having to comply with different rules in each Member State.
Moreover, most respondents do not want any specific restrictions to be placed on how statements of support are collected and would like citizens of the Union to be able to sign up to an initiative anywhere – for example in the street - regardless of where they live or come from.
Respondents have almost unanimously called citizens to be allowed to support initiatives online.
The consultation also confirmed that it is appropriate to set a time-limit for the collection of statements of support for an initiative. Most respondents agreed that one year would be a suitable time-limit although there were also many respondents who favoured either a longer period (18 months) or a shorter one (6 months).
In addition, respondents generally favour a mandatory system of registration of proposed initiatives on a specific website provided by the European Commission prior to launching the collection process. They believe that such registration would allow for the follow-up of on-going initiatives and would provide a tool for communication and transparency.
Lastly, respondents broadly supported fixing a minimum age for supporting a citizens' initiative and many considered that it should be linked to the age at which citizens are entitled to vote in the European Parliament elections. Some respondents, however, argued in favour of fixing the minimum age at 16, emphasising that the citizens' initiative is not an election but only an agenda-setting initiative and that having a fixed minimum age of 16 across the EU would foster greater interest and debate among young people on European issues.
Respondents broadly agree that a 6-month time-limit would be appropriate for the Commission to examine and come to a conclusion on an initiative.
However, the consultation gave rise to different points of view as regards the issue of admissibility of proposed initiatives.
Many respondents consider that the admissibility of a citizens' initiative should be checked before all the statements of support have been collected in order to avoid a waste of resources as well as frustration among citizens who have signed up to successful but ultimately inadmissible initiatives. Some public authorities have also expressed concern about having to use public resources in order to carry out checks for initiatives that ultimately would not be admissible.
In contrast, other respondents are against an ex-ante admissibility check arguing that the debate created across Europe by an initiative is more important than the end result. They believe that it would not be appropriate for the Commission to be able to prevent, from the outset, a public debate and campaign from taking place on a citizens' initiative even if it is not within the framework of its powers.
The proposal fixes the minimum number of Member States at one third. This draws on other provisions of the Treaty, according to which nine or one third of Member States is sufficient to ensure the representation of a Union interest. It is the threshold used in the provisions on 'enhanced cooperation' which provide that 'at least nine Member States' must participate i. It is also used as the threshold needed to trigger the subsidiarity procedure provided for in Article 7 i of the Protocol on the application of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality, annexed to the Treaties.
This threshold also reflects the outcome of the public consultation.
Drawing on the argument made during the consultation that a fixed percentage for all Member States would not be equitable, the proposal provides for a fixed threshold for each Member State, which is degressively proportional to the population of each State with a minimum threshold and a ceiling.
In order to ensure that these thresholds are based on objective criteria, the Commission has based them on a multiple of the number of Members of the European Parliament for each Member State i. The multiple chosen is 750 in order to reflect the demands of many stakeholders to set a threshold below 0.2% of the population, on the one hand, and to take account of concerns that the threshold in small Member States should not be too low, on the other. Indeed, by using a multiplication factor of 750, the threshold for over half of Member States would be lower or significantly lower than 0.2% of the population, whilst for the smaller Member States the threshold would be higher.
This system will thus allow a proportionately lower number of signatories for large countries and a proportionately higher number for small countries.
In light of the outcome of the consultation, the proposal sets the minimum age as the age at which citizens are entitled to vote in the European Parliament elections.
The proposal provides for a mandatory system of registration of proposed initiatives on an online register made available by the Commission. This reflects the broad support expressed for this option during the consultation. Registration will not imply an endorsement of the proposed citizens' initiative by the Commission.
The proposal does not set any restrictions as to how statements of support should be collected. This is in line with the views expressed by most stakeholders that the collection process should be free.
Moreover, in light of the responses to the consultation, the proposal also provides for statements of support to be collected online. However, in order to ensure that statements of support collected online are as genuine as those collected in paper format and that the Member States can check them in similar fashion, the proposal requires that online collection systems should have adequate security features in place and that the Member States should certify the conformity of such systems with those security requirements, without prejudice to the responsibility of the organisers for the protection of personal data. Given the need to draw up detailed technical specifications in order to implement this provision, it is proposed that the Commission should lay down these specifications by means of implementing measures. Online collection should nevertheless be allowed from the outset.
The proposal provides for a time-limit of 12 months for the collection of statements of support. This reflects the need, confirmed by the responses to the Green Paper to ensure on the one hand that citizens' initiatives remain relevant and on the other hand that the collection period is sufficiently long taking into account the complexity of working throughout the European Union.
The proposal provides that the organiser of an initiative must submit a request to the Commission for a decision on the admissibility of the initiative after having collected 300.000 statements of support from signatories coming from at least three Member States.
The thresholds chosen for this admissibility check broadly correspondent to one third of the final thresholds required for presenting an initiative to the Commission. At least one million statements of support from at least one third of Member States are needed for that purpose. It can therefore be considered that one third of those thresholds provides a sufficiently representative sample in order to trigger the admissibility check.
The Commission would have two months to assess and take a decision as to whether the initiative falls within the framework of its powers and concerns a matter for which a legal act of the Union can be adopted for the purpose of implementing the Treaties.
This approach reflects the need expressed during the consultation for the legal admissibility of an initiative to be checked at an earlier stage, before all statements of support have been collected and before Member States are required to verify them. However it does not provide for such admissibility to be checked at the very outset before initiatives are registered, as a major objective is to promote public debate on European issues, even if an initiative does not finally fall within the framework of the legal powers of the Commission. Moreover the approach chosen avoids giving the impression that the Commission has given a favourable opinion on an initiative per se before any statements of support have been collected. In addition, this approach would avoid an administrative burden on Member States for carrying out checks on the statements of support received for an initiative which ultimately may not be admissible.
With a view to limiting the administrative burden for Member States, the proposal leaves it up to them to decide on the checks to be carried out in order to verify the validity of statements of support collected for an initiative which has been declared admissible. Such checks should nevertheless be appropriate in order to enable them to certify the number of statements of support received for the Member State in question and should be carried out within a time-limit of three months. Such an approach will, for instance, enable the Member States to carry out such checks on the basis of random samples, which is the verification system that most Member States use for national citizens' initiatives.
The proposal provides that the Commission would have a time-limit of 4 months to examine a citizens' initiative which has been formally submitted to the Commission in accordance with the provisions of the Regulation. This reflects the overall support for this approach during the consultation. The Commission would then be required to set out its conclusions on the initiative and the action it intends to take in a communication, which would be notified to the organiser as well as to the European Parliament and Council and would be made public.
The proposal seeks to ensure that data protection is fully assured, in the organisation and follow-up of a citizens' initiative, by all the relevant actors - organiser, Member States and the Commission. The requirements of Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data i and of Regulation (EC) No 45/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December 2000 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data by the Community institutions and bodies and on the free movement of such data i apply to the processing of personal data carried out in application of this Regulation. However, it was considered necessary, for the avoidance of all doubt, to designate the organiser of a citizens' initiative as the data controller within the meaning of Directive 95/46 /EC and to specify the maximum period within which the personal data collected for the purposes of a citizens' initiative may be retained. In addition, although the provisions of Chapter III of Directive 95/46/EC on judicial remedies, liability and sanctions are fully applicable as regards the data processing carried out in application of this Regulation, it was also considered necessary to provide that Member States ensure that organisers of a citizens' initiative are liable in accordance with their civil or criminal law for infringements of the Regulation.
Given the absence of any experience at EU level with this form of participatory democracy instrument, the proposal provides for a review clause, which requires that the Commission should report on the implementation of the Regulation after five years.
In addition, bearing in mind that certain technical adjustments may need to be made to the Annexes of the Regulation, in particular in light of experience, the proposal provides the possibility for the Commission to amend the Annexes by means of delegated acts in accordance with Article 290 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Indeed the Commission considers that such adjustments would not warrant a full legislative proposal and that the use of delegated powers is therefore justified.