Published: 25 September 2024. Writer: Eleni Ilia.
Since its establishment in 2012, the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) was hailed as a revolutionary tool for direct democracy in the European Union. Designed to empower citizens by allowing them to propose new legislation, the ECI has the potential to enhance democratic engagement. However, despite notable initiatives, the ECI’s success in driving legislative change has been limited. This raises a crucial question: is the ECI truly a meaningful instrument of citizen participation, or does it fall short of its promise?
In the quest for direct democracy within the European Union (EU), the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) was heralded as a groundbreaking tool. Established in 2012, the ECI allows EU citizens to directly request the European Commission to propose new legislation, provided they gather at least one million signatures from seven member states.
While this instrument has the potential to promote citizen participation and democratic engagement, its real-world impact is questionable—especially in the realm of environmental law and climate change governance in the EU. The ECI has seen notable initiatives such as Right to Water, Ban Glyphosate, and Save Bees and Farmers, all of which aimed at addressing environmental concerns like access to clean water, pesticide regulation, and biodiversity protection.
However, despite these efforts, the ECI’s success rate in driving legislative change has been limited. This raises an important question: is the ECI truly a vehicle for meaningful citizen participation, or is it a symbolic tool that falls short of its promise?
A Flawed Process
The ECI’s structure presents several challenges that hinder its effectiveness. For one, the European Commission retains significant discretion in deciding whether or not to act on an initiative. Even after reaching the signature threshold, the Commission may reject proposals on procedural grounds or deem them outside its legal remit. This happened with Ban Glyphosate, an initiative advocating for stricter pesticide controls, which collected over a million signatures but was largely disregarded in favour of industry-friendly policies.
Moreover, the complexity of the ECI process itself—gathering cross-border support and navigating bureaucratic hurdles—often discourages smaller, grassroots campaigns from participating. While larger organizations with sufficient resources may find some success, the instrument remains inaccessible to many who lack funding and technical know-how.
ECI has failed to produce any new legislative measures
Environmental issues are particularly challenging for the ECI process. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution are inherently transnational, multi-stakeholder issues that require coordinated action from multiple actors. The limited scope of the ECI, which only permits initiatives within the European Commission’s legislative competences, restricts citizen engagement in these complex areas. For example, the Right to Water initiative, the first ECI to gather sufficient support, called for the recognition of water and sanitation as human rights. While the initiative generated significant public debate and awareness, it failed to produce any new legislative measures. Similarly, Save Bees and Farmers, an initiative to phase out synthetic pesticides, succeeded in raising awareness but did not lead to concrete regulatory changes.
Proposed reforms fail to address the core issue
The European Commission’s 2023 review of the ECI sought to address some of these concerns by promising reforms to increase transparency, strengthen support for organisers, and improve follow-up procedures. However, critics argue that the reforms do not address the core issue: the Commission’s overwhelming discretion in deciding which initiatives move forward.
For environmental advocates, the ECI remains a useful tool for raising awareness and mobilising public support. Yet its limitations suggest that the instrument, in its current form, is better suited as a campaign tool rather than a means of achieving substantial policy change. Until the ECI is reformed to genuinely reflect citizen input, its role in promoting participatory democracy will remain incomplete.
ECI Falls Short of Its Potential to Foster Meaningful Legislative Change
The ECI, while a noble effort to enhance citizen participation in the EU, is mired in procedural complexities and institutional limitations. For environmental law and policy advocates, the ECI has not yet lived up to its potential as a tool for fostering meaningful legislative change. As the EU grapples with pressing issues like climate change, it must find ways to reform the ECI to ensure that citizen voices can truly shape the future of European policy.
Read the article that the blog is based on: https://journals.lub.lu.se/njel/issue/view/3556
Eleni Ilia is a doctoral researcher in international law at the University of Helsinki. She works as a researcher in the 2035Legitimacy project.