Two new European Citizens’ Initiatives, ‘ECI for a Water-Smart and Resilient Europe’ and ‘PsychedeliCare’, were registered by the European Commission on Wednesday 11 September. Their respective organisers now have six months to start collecting signatures.
‘ECI for a Water-Smart and Resilient Europe’ calls for water resilience to be given the same priority as decarbonisation. The initiative promotes an action plan for water.
The ‘PsychedeliCare’ initiative advocates for the medical use of psychedelics against the backdrop of more than one in six people in the European Union suffering from mental health issues. The organisers of this initiative also maintain that pharmacology has its limitations and problems, and are calling on the Commission to roll out psychedelic therapies.
A European Citizens’ Initiative must collect at least one million signatures from EU citizens in at least seven Member States before the European Commission can decide what action to take. The European Commission points out that registering an initiative is based on a legal analysis, but “does not prejudge the legal and political conclusions [...] or the measures it would take” if the million signatures were reached. (Original version in French by Florent Servia)