New EU law to allow citizens to request laws when enough signatures gathered

[News_Editor]

New EU law to allow citizens to request laws when enough signatures gathered

2010-12-16 09:28:47 GMT+7 (ICT)

BRUSSELS (BNO NEWS) -- The European Parliament on Wednesday approved the ground rules for a 'citizens initiative' which was laid down by the Lisbon Treaty. It will require the European Commission to consider a law if requested by at least one million EU citizens.

Once the legislation is in place, a "citizens' committee" consisting of people from at least one fourth of the Member States will be able to register an initiative with the Commission. After the Commission has made an initial admissibility check, citizens can start collecting signatures either on paper or online.

The required million signatures must be collected within 12 months and a minimum number of signatures needs to be gathered in each Member State, ranging from 3750 signatures in Malta to 74,250 in Germany.

Member States will verify the signatories' details and, for this purpose, each State will decide which information is needed and most will require an ID card number. All signatories must be EU citizens and old enough to vote in European elections.

At the end of the process, the Commission will decide within three months if a new law can be proposed and will have to make its reasons public.

"Today the European Union is opening itself up to participatory democracy," said rapporteur Alain Lamassoure. "The citizens now have the same right of political initiative as we have here in Parliament and in Council. Now it is up to our citizens to act," Lamassoure added during the debate preceding the vote, in which his report was approved by 628 votes to 15 with 24 abstentions.

Parliament's main aim was to make the procedure as simple and user-friendly as possible, to avoid causing frustration to the public. Its key demands have been accepted and thus, for example, the admissibility check will now be carried out at the outset, rather than after 300,000 signatures have been collected.

The minimum number of Member States from which signatures must be gathered was lowered from one third to one fourth, and a proper follow-up will now be guaranteed to all initiatives backed by one million signatures, including a public hearing.

"The citizens' initiative is a unique opportunity," co-rapporteur Zita Gurmai stated. "For the first time citizens can now get together and let us know if we are doing our job properly. We need this badly."

In addition, the Commission will help the organizers of an initiative by providing a user-friendly guide, by setting up a point of contact and by providing online collection software free of charge.

The Council is expected to formally adopt the new legislation within a few weeks. After this, the Member States will have one year to enact the necessary national legislation. People should then be able to launch citizens initiatives from the beginning of 2012.

-- © BNO News All rights reserved 2010-12-16

[hammered]

Be interesting to see if direct democracy, of which this isnt really an example, will become a part of the future. With the technology around now it is a lot more practical, but would probably face massive pressure agaisnt from representatives, lobbyists and others that benefit more from demcracy not really for the people. Direct democracy would also have to face up the reality of coercion by the very few who own most of the worlds media too.

[mccw]

On the other hand; there could well be 1 million Muslims who might think sharia law be a great thing to institute across the eu. Similarly there could well be 1 million rightwing extreemists who would vote to kick them all out. Representative democracy is good because most of the time it tends to sideline the nut jobs. Luckaly this eu mesure is only for the "proposal" of laws.

[cdnvic]

They may want to look at California, where almost everything is left up to voter initiatives which have strangled the state's finances. Nobody wants to vote for anything difficult.

[TAWP]

This is nutty. Democracy by the activists. We need a term for this...