Citizens' Initiative Campaign

The European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) was one of the major innovations of the Lisbon Treaty.  A new democratic tool, it aims to allow one million citizens to ask the EU to take action in an area that it has the power to act.

Our Citizens’ Initiative Campaign focuses on tracking the development of this new democratic tool as it goes from the consultation to implementation phase.  We will keep an eye on its progression to see how committed the various EU and national institutions are to fulfilling its potential, while also seeking to influence those institutions on our views of the best implementation practices for the European Citizens’ Initiative.

We have also been keeping an eye on how much public awareness of the Initiative is out there among the people through a nationwide poll conducted on Europe Day, and through media tracking. We intend to lobby the government departments that are charged with implementing the Citizens’ Initiative on how best to communicate this new tool when it is set to be introduced later in 2010.

Featured are EM Ireland campaign postcards from the nationwide poll that took place in Cork, Galway and Dublin on Europe Day 2010. Full details on the poll conducted to emerge later in 2010.

We were asked to appear in front of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on European Affairs to give our views on this initiative, which we did on Tuesday 26 January. If  you  want  to  see  how  we did – check out the video at euaffairs.ie Our  report  was  appended  in full  to  the official  submission of the Oireachtas to the European Commission – and we were delighted to see that a number of our proposals were included in this final submission. Our report was also submitted  to  the European Commission directly and to the EM International network.

The legal basis of the citizens’ initiative is set out in Article 11, Paragraph 4 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) and Article 24, paragraph 1 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). Both were last amended as the Lisbon Treaty, to include this new tool.

The official site of the Citizens’ Intiative is www.citizens-initiative.eu and further updates can be found at the CI Facebook page is www.facebook.com/citizens.initiative. If you have any questions on the Citizens’ Initiative, please contact us.