I’ve been trying to spend some time this week looking at the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) in the context of the work I’m doing here at the University of Washington on the EU and digital engagement.
Colleagues responsible for the ECI in the Commission, as well as people outside the institutions who are working on some of the first Citizens’ Initiatives, have been kind enough to share their experiences with me. There are several academic analyses that have been published on the ECI, including Citizens Initiatives in Europe – Procedures and Consequences of Agenda-Setting by Citizens and a special issue of the Journal Perspectives on European Politics and Society. And I’ve found it interesting to begin comparing the ECI with citizens’ initiatives and petitions here in the USA.
European Citizens’ Initiative
The European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) has been described as “… the biggest democratic innovation in the EU since the introduction of direct elections to the European Parliament back in 1979” (Bruno Kaufmann in “Citizens Initiatives in Europe – Procedures and Consequences of Agenda-Setting by Citizens”).
The ECI allows EU citizens to call on the European Commission to come forward with legal proposals. In order to do so, they need to gather signatures from at least one million fellow EU citizens, from at least 7 Member States and within a twelve month time period. The issue must fall in an area where the EU is competent to legislate.
The ECI is the world’s first example of transnational direct democracy. It relies heavily on the internet, and would probably not have been possible before the digital age.
The development of an online mechanism for the collection of signatures, including a certification system that takes account of different national practices with regard to proof of identity, has proved challenging. In an article entitled “Towards e-ECIs? European Participation by Online Pan-European Mobilization”, Stéphane Carrara from the Centre de Recherches Politiques de la Sorbonne has pointed to other potential obstacles to online mobilisation including language barriers, uneven internet literacy and the relatively stringent data collection requirements in the ECI Regulation.
Nevertheless, some fifteen European Citizens Initiatives have now been registered and begun the process of collecting signatures.
Fraternité 2020 was the very first ECI to be registered, in May 2012. The Initiative aims to boost EU funding for exchange programmes in order to increase opportunities for young peple. I spoke with a representative of Fraternité 2020 about their experiences so far with the ECI. They confirmed that digital media have been vitally important for their initiative. Online tools have helped them to put together a “Citizens’ Committee” that includes representatives from all EU countries plus Croatia. Fraternité 2020 are using social media, including a Facebook page and Twitter acccount, as well as traditional media to promote their initiative and encourage people to sign.
“We the people” – petitioning the White House
The right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” is guaranteed in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. The Obama Administration updated this right for the digital age by creating an online platform “We the People” in September 2011. If a petition obtains enough support, White House staff review it, ensure it is sent to the appropriate policy experts and issue an official response.
We the People has been so successful that the Administration has been obliged to raise the admissibility threshold twice, partly to avoid frivolous petitions and partly to keep the system manageable with the available resources. Petitions have attracted almost 10 million signatures since the platform was launched.
The White House Director of Digital Strategy, Macon Phillips, reported on the White House blog on 15 January that the threshold was being raised to 100,000 signatures. (This is still considerably below the 1 million signature threshold for the ECI.)
State level initiatives in the USA
Washington is one of 24 US States that allow for some form of direct democracy through citizens’ initiative or referendum. One of the most topical initiatives in this State in recent years is “Washington Initiative 502″, which led to a popular vote to legalize marijuana in November 2012. Although Washington State allows online voter registration (it was the first State to allow voter registration via a Facebook app in the run-up to the 2012 Presidential elections) there does not currently seem to be any system for online signature of initiatives.
Reblogged this on the young blog.
So glad to discover this blog! I’m a dual EU (French) and American citizen who worked in Brussels with the ECI Campaign in 2010-2011. So I naturally see the EU through American eyes…and vice versa.;-) I returned to Chicago in mid-2011 and am now working on D&D at a local level here.
Some of what I’ve written about the ECI (as well as direct democracy in the USA) is on my blog at http://www.janicethomson.net. See also the briefing paper I wrote for Involve (UK) “A Space Inside Europe for the Public Before a European Public Space”. http://www.involve.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/ECI-A-Space-Inside-Europe-for-the-Public.pdf
It’s too bad you didn’t arrive in Seattle sooner. It was host to the NCDD biannual conference in October 2012. Perusing that conference guidebook though might give you additional ideas of who to contact there about online public engagement: http://www.ncdd.org/files/NCDD2012_Guidebook.pdf
Thanks for the feedback and interesting links, Janice. I subscribed to your blog and look forward to further exchanges about digital engagement in the EU and USA!
Reblogged this on Fraternité 2020.
I received some interesting feedback via Twitter from the right2water ECI. Their initiative concerns the right to clean drinking water and quality sanitation. They have already reached an impressive 750,000 signatures and hope to reach the 1 million target by September 2013. More information here: http://www.right2water.eu/
Thanks. My writing going forward though will probably focus on D&D in Chicago, not necessarily digital. But still you’re welcome to follow.
Interesting comparison of the two models of citizens’ initiatives.
One thing jumps out, the admission of an initiative is (seems?) much easier in the US than in the EU. Comparing only the admissibility threshold criterion, it appears that a minimum of 1,984 signatures by 1000 citizens is required in the EU for an initiative to be taken into consideration by the administration, for only…0,318 signatures in the US! The EU citizens’ initiative requires six times more signatures than the US equivalent, even though US threshold have been raised twice. And, the EU initiative has some other challenging criteria that are not easy to fulfill. The path seems (to me) therefore much more difficult in Europe than in the US. The good news is that the EU citizens’ initiative is on a test run and it will be reviewed in 2015.
(my ratio calculations are based on population in 2012: 314M in the US, 504M in the EU).
Thanks for your observations, Claudio. The threshold is higher for the ECI, but it’s also important to note that the “prize” for gathering the required number of signatures is potentially higher. Within three months, successful ECIs will be offered the opportunity to meet with Commission representatives to discuss their initiative, a public hearing in the European Parliament and a formal response in the form of a Commission Communication in all EU languages. In the US system “if a petition gets enough support, White House staff will review it, ensure it’s sent to the appropriate policy experts, and issue an official response”.
There seems to be some confusion here between the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI), citizens’ initiatives in US states and countries like Switzerland, and petitions like the White House’s “We the People”. The ECI is stronger than a petition, but much, much weaker than a true “citizens’ initiative”. It is an instrument of participatory democracy, NOT direct democracy. It is actually unfortunate that it is named a “citizens’ initiative”, because it does not in fact work like one. This has created much misunderstanding about its true nature and how strict the EU implementing regulation really needs to be.
“Citizens’ Initiatives” in US states like Washington, California, and Oregon (or in European countries like Switzerland or Germany lander), are instruments of DIRECT democracy. Initiatives with enough signatures go directly to the public for a popular vote, which if successful, is binding — i.e., the people create law directly. In the US, signatures must be collected in person, not online — which is very expensive.
The White House’s “We the People” is a petition, not an initiative. It is completely toothless, a vehicle for public discussion.The USA does not have direct democracy at a national level, only the state level. See http://www.ballotpedia.org for state-by-state details.
If an ECI is successful, all the Commission has to do is respond publicly to its topic. It does not even need to issue a proposal for regulatory change. Any proposals that are in fact issued will then go through regular EU legislative procedure. Given this, the regulation implementing the ECI is excessively restrictive. It should be closer to rules for non-binding petitions, as in the UK.
To learn more about how “citizens’ initiatives” work around the world see the Initiative & Referendum Institute Europe. http://www.iri-europe.org/
To learn more about how the citizens’ initiative works in California, Oregon, and Arizona, see my paper on direct democracy in the US West. I was invited to join this study tour because of my work on the ECI Campaign. So I looked at it through the lens of my experience in Europe with the ECI. The ECI is toothless compared to the power of initiatives in these states. http://tinyurl.com/75fejqe
Hello Tony,
while I very much appreciate you starting the debate, it shall be duly noted that the US “We The People” petition’s process may have a more precise correspondent in the EU petition’s system.
While in the US presidential system, the process petitions the Executive Power, here in Europe, bastion of parliamentary democracy, the petition’s process centers around the political role of the European Parliament.
I’d be glad to take the discussion further anytime!
Ciao
Francesco
http://swampland.time.com/2013/01/31/we-the-people/
Janice, thanks again for sharing your experiences from both the USA and Europe!
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