Commissie voor Institutioneel Beleid bereikt akkoord over de procedure rondom het burgerinitiatief (en) - Montesquieu Instituut

An agreement on the "citizens' initiative", the new tool introduced by the Lisbon Treaty whereby one million citizens can ask the Commission for a new EU law, has been reached by Constitutional Affairs Committee MEPs and Commission and Council delegates. The three-way discussions were concluded late on Monday 6 December.

Parliament's negotiating team consisted of the Constitutional Affairs Committee rapporteurs, Alain Lamassoure (EPP, FR) and Zita Gurmai (S&D, HU), and the two Petitions Committee rapporteurs, Diana Wallis (ALDE, UK) and Gerald Häfner (Greens/EFA, DE), as well as the shadow rapporteurs Helmut Scholz (GUE/NGL, DE) and Morten Messerschmidt (EFD, DK).

Key achievements

The MEPs' main aim in the negotiations was to make the citizens' initiative as simple and user-friendly as possible and to avoid causing frustration to citizens. Parliament's key demands were accepted in the discussions:

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  the admissibility check on an initiative will be made at the point of registration, not after 300,000 signatures have already been collected,
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  to ensure the initiatives are well-founded and have a European dimension, a citizens' committee of at least seven members coming from seven Member States should be set up to register an initiative,
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  the signatories must come from a minimum number of Member States: this minimum was reduced to one-quarter of the Member States; the original proposal was one-third, whereas MEPs had suggested one-fifth,
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  the Commission will help initiative organisers by providing a user-friendly guide and setting up a point of contact,
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  if an initiative manages to collect one million signatures, a proper follow-up will be guaranteed, including a public hearing, and
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  the regulation will be reviewed after three years, and not after five years as the Commission originally proposed.

The institutions also reached a compromise on the difficult issue of how to verify the authenticity of signatures. It is up to Member States to do this, and the method of verifying identity differs significantly from country to country. MEPs wanted to make the signing of an initiative as easy as possible, by requiring as little personal information as possible. According to the compromise, Member States will have some flexibility in choosing which information is required in each country.

Next steps

Parliament's Constitutional Affairs Committee will vote on the agreed text on Monday, 13 December. Parliament is expected to vote on the final regulation at its plenary session on 16 December. The Council is also committed to approving the regulation by the end of this year. The Member States will then have one year to incorporate the new legislation into national law.