In an open letter published on Wednesday 24 October, 18 representatives of civil society, organisers of European citizens' initiatives (ECIs) and NGOs urged the Council of the EU to reconsider its proposal of removing any alternative to the digital register of signatures held by the Commission.
The ECI, which was instituted by the Treaty of Lisbon, allows a million EU citizens to invite the Commission to present a legislative proposal on a subject of European competence. This instrument has not had the anticipated results: only four initiatives have managed to gather the required number of signatures, three of which have been followed up by measures at European level.
In September 2017, the Commission put together its draft revision of the ECI procedure (see EUROPE 11863). The revision is currently the subject of inter-institutional negotiations.
Representatives of civil societies, which have already several times expressed their frustration at the turn taken by this revision (see EUROPE 1199, 12058), focused on the letter on the signature collection phase.
Currently, organisers of ECIs may alternatively use the platform set in place by the Commission or the OpenECI application, developed by initiative of the organisers themselves.
In their letter, the 18 civil society representatives call for the “digital freedom” of organisers to be preserved.
In the public consultation on ECIs arranged by the Commission in mid-2017, 67% of the 5000 respondents said that they were unable of retaining the individual collection systems.
Although they acknowledge that the Commission's platform has been improved since it was launched, the signatories explained that getting rid of OpenECI would “create uncertainty for future ECI organisers and stop a fruitful process of mutual learning, it would also undermine the possibility for civil society to further invest in the ECI's digital dimension”.
The letter is available in full at: https://bit.ly/2D3e5c2. (Original version in French by Mathieu Solal)