European Citizens’ Initiative

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Organisers of ‘Fur Free Europe’ call for banning fur farms in the EU and farmed fur products from the European market. They collected 1,502,319 valid signatures, with thresholds reached in 18 countries. They will meet with the European Commission in July and will get an official reply by mid-December.

Eager to discover more about the initiative itself and get insights on how to run a successful ECI campaign? Listen to organiser Elise Fleury in this CitizenCentral podcast episode.

As required by the ECI Regulation, the Commission periodically reviews the functioning of the ECI. The next review report should be presented by the end of 2023. As a contribution to this exercise, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the implementation of the European citizens’ initiative.

The resolution highlights how the revised ECI Regulation has lowered the procedural hurdles for organisers and supporters of ECIs under several aspects. It also recommends several actions to further improve the ECI as a unique cross-border tool for participatory democracy.

The toolkit for secondary schools ‘EU Democracy in Action – Have your say with the European Citizens’ Initiative’ is now available in all official EU languages. Click ‘more’ below for access.

To become active citizens, young people need to understand how democracy works and what their rights and responsibilities are. Through instruction and collaborative work, pupils learn about how the EU has evolved over time.

In the 2023/2024 school year, a competition for schools will be organised, related to this toolkit. Three teams from three different schools will get the prize: a study trip to Brussels. Be sure to check the ECI website and this newsletter in the autumn for more details.

The ECI IT team works on constant improvements of the online collection system and the organiser account. A new feature, for example, enables organisers to request, from the organiser account, the anonymisation of their private sponsors in the list of received funding.

While still improving the overall usability and security of the system and keeping personal emails protected from hackers, the recent IT updates also include the release of the ‘unsubscribe’ email functionality. From now on, citizens will be able to directly unsubscribe from the messages they receive from organisers via the system.

Two new podcast episodes were published in June!

In episode ‘What impact do European citizens’ initiatives have? Examples from successful initiatives’ organisers and Commission experts are interviewed to give a closer look to the follow-up on three of the initiatives that reached more than 1 million signatures and received a reply from the Commission.

The episode ‘The ABCs of ‘EU Democracy in Action’ showcases the on-going efforts to make the ECI common European knowledge – starting with high school students and a learning kit for them.

Tune in and discover the podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, and SoundCloud.

Subscribe and share CitizenCentral podcast today!

On Thursday, 8 June, the ECI Day 2023: Upskilling citizens for a successful ECI with impact! took place.

It was an occasion to exchange views and experiences on the ECI, where initiative organisers shared their stories and lessons learned, and experts and policy-makers contributed to the conversation by their ideas related to the ECI.

Check out the conclusions, photos and recordings and let us know what you thought of the day by taking the survey (available until 8 July!).

This summer ECI Ambassadors will attend different democracy festivals. We encourage you to stop by and say hello!

On Saturday, 12 August, a discussion about the ECI will take place at the Arvamus ‘Opinion’ Festival in Paide, Estonia.

In Sweden, several discussions and a stand dedicated to the ECI will be held at the Frihamndsdagarna ‘Democracy festival’ in Gothenburg, on Thursday, 31 August and Friday, 1 September.

Stay tuned for more events featuring the ECI in Romania, Italy and Poland in the upcoming months and refer to our calendar for more information.

Check out the newly updated infographic for interesting facts and figures on citizens’ initiatives between 2012 and 2023. This infographic includes data on the nine successful ECIs, the organisers of all ECIs (country of origin and residence, age) and funding of ECIs. Click ‘more’ to access the figures!

‘Save Bees and Farmers! Towards a Bee-Friendly Agriculture for a Healthy Environment’ is the 7th successful European citizens’ initiative, and it received a response from the Commission in April. Interested in learning about what factors contributed to their success and the outcome of this initiative?

Read this new success story by clicking ‘more’.

Interested in learning more about the ECI as a participatory democracy tool? Read our blog post about the new publication ‘European Citizens’ Initative: A Tool for Engagement and Active Citizenship’. This publication, one of the main outputs from the Erasmus+ Project ECI From A to Z, compiles theoretical and practical contributions from academics, researchers, ECI organisers and ECI experts.

The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) organises an annual youth event called "Your Europe, Your Say!" (YEYS), bringing together 16- to 18-year-old students from all over Europe.

In this year’s edition in March, called "Youth Democracy Dialogues", students shared recommendations on active citizenship and youth participatory engagement. They also participated in a group workshop where they simulated the European Citizens’ Initiative process to learn how to launch an initiative and to campaign for it. The teachers who accompanied them received an early preview of the ECI toolkit for schools.

Download the report from the event (available in English and French) and watch the event highlights video by clicking ‘more’.

Are you following a specific citizens’ initiative but wonder what happens next?

Check our Step-by-Step factsheet to find all the information you need on the lifecycle of ECIs, from getting started to receiving a formal response from the European Commission.

Download it here.

The Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) programme has an open call for proposals about: “Promoting citizens' and representative associations’ participation in and contribution to the democratic and civic life of the Union by making known and publicly exchanging their views in all areas on Union action”.

The deadline to submit is 5 September 2023. The 2023 call is accessible by clicking ‘more’ below.