Brussels, 15/06/2010 (Agence Europe) - The General Affairs Council, under the presidency of Miguel Ángel Moratinos on Monday 14 June in Luxembourg, managed to obtain a “general orientation” on the proposal for a regulation from the Commission on 31 March last for implementing the citizens' initiative -, one of the new additions included in the Lisbon Treaty. The EU27 objective is to reach an agreement with the European Parliament in the first reading. If this transpires, the necessary legislative framework for launching the citizens' initiatives could be in place by the autumn. The political agreement from the Council, which was also supported on Monday by Commissioner Maroš Šefèoviè, amends the Commission's initial proposal on several points, particularly with regard to the registration and admissibility of an initiative. The first phase of launching an initiative consists of registering the project on a Commission created internet site. Currently, initiative organisers (who must be EU citizens old enough to vote in European elections) have to provide clear identification of who they are and reveal financing sources behind the initiative in question. Proposed citizens' initiatives, which are clearly outside the field of application of the Treaties and/or which can reasonably be considered as damaging or not serious, will not be registered. The final decision on admissibility will be taken by the Commission once the organisers have collected 100,000 signatures in at least three member states (the proposal from the Commission stipulated 300,000 signatures but the Council lowered this to 100,000). Once an initiative has been judged as admissible, it will have to have at least 1 million signatures from at least a third of all member states (therefore, nine countries at the moment) in order to be launched. The Council agreement also maintains “progressive degressivity” (already used to calculate the number of MEPs from each member state) which will be applied in order to establish the minimum number of signatories coming from each of the member states. Thus it will be necessary to collect at least 72,000 signatures in Germany, compared to 4,500 in Luxembourg, Cyprus, Malta and Estonia. (H.B./transl.fl)