All ongoing European Citizens' Initiatives massively suffer from Covid-19-related lock-down measures which severely endanger participatory democracy in Europe. Only very little numbers of European Citizens' Initiatives signatures have been collected over the last six months. We therefore ask the EU institutions to protect and strengthen participatory democracy in
Read moreThe pandemic situation has dramatically worsened in the past days. In order to reduce the number of infections, most governments have decided to implement far-reaching measures including lock-downs and curfews which strongly restrict ECIs from outreaching to citizens and run their campaigns. We thus urgently
Read moreThis week The ECI Campaign celebrates a great success: following our proposal and after weeks of intense discussion with Members of the European Parliament and Commission civil servants, the Commission has announced that the deadline for collection of signatures for ongoing ECIs shall be extended by six
Read moreWe are deeply concerned that the pandemic spread of the corona virus all over Europe may negatively impact the ECI instrument and democratic life in the EU. Many of the ECI organizers we support through our independent ECI Help Desk report that it is currently impossible to make
Read moreHere you find the latest overview of all ongoing and closed European Citizens’ Initiatives that have been registered so far by the European Commission. ECIs are presented in chronological order with additional information on each ECI including a monthly up-date on the number of collected
Read moreAt the beginning of 2020, the European Citizens' Initiative will work on a newly revised ECI regulation that is to simplify the procedure and provide greater support for ECI organisers. Let’s discuss the future of ECI and European democracy. Join the ECI community event February
Read moreIn the past year we have supported many ECIs profoundly with legal and campaigning advice and provided our openECI software. In 2019 an impressive number of nearly 2 of 3 million ECI signatures were collected with our online collection software openECI. This represents a rate of
Read moreWhile the negotiations on the new main ECI regulation (Regulation 2019/788) were largely finalized in 2018, the specific rules at national level were largely finalized in 2019 (with the exception of the delay in Germany). Nearly all ECI organizers have reported about the massively burdensome ID-number requirement
Read moreIn the framework of the reform of the European Citizens Initiative („ECI“), one of the major issues was that only few citizens initiatives were able to gain support of a million Union citizens (see page 6 f. of the explanatory memorandum of the proposal for
Read moreOn 12 December 2018, the EU institutions reached an agreement on the new regulation on the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) after 15 months of negotiations within and between the European Parliament, the Council and the European Commission. The legislative revision process has provided a significant
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