The European Citizens’ Initiative is one of the major innovations of the Treaty of Lisbon, aimed at increasing direct democracy in the European Union. The initiative enables one million EU citizens, who are nationals of at least one quarter of the Member States, to call directly on the European Commission to bring forward an initiative of interest to them in an area of EU competence.

This Thursday, on the 10th of May, the European Parliament will vote on the renewal of the EU roaming regulation. It is expected to accept the compromise that was reached between the Parliament and the Council at the end of March.

What is to be expected from the new roaming rules? First of all, prices for roaming will go down further. For example, calling home will cost  around 34 ct/min from July on and go down to around 23 ct/min until 2014. The cost of using the internet when abroad will come down from up to 12000€/GB now (no kidding!) to around 840€/GB this year and 240€/GB by 2014. In addition, consumer protection mechanisms will be improved: for example, you will receive a warning message when you travel outside of the EU and spend more than 50€ on internet roaming. This is all not too bad. We at Europeans for Fair Roaming fought for those things and are happy with the compromise. But nevertheless, prices will remain high. Just compare the price caps above with what you pay at home…

But the hopes are really pinned on two other measures of the new regulation: Operators will put in a position to offer lower prices (but whether they will do so remains to be seen). And from 2014 on, you will be able to switch to a different provider when going abroad if you feel your home provider takes too much money off you for roaming (that’s called “unbundling”). This way, existing operators will be able to access markets where they don’t have their own networks yet. In effect, we could see the emergence of low-cost providers for roaming services – or even the emergence of pan-European providers.  Some even see players like Google and Apple as future pan-European virtual operators.

Whether this will really play out this way will only be seen in two years from now and will depend heavily on how user-friendly this unbundling will be. We might find ourselves back in the same discussion in three years if it doesn’t…

On Thursday, the European Parliament will vote on the new EU roaming regulation. Voting starts at 11:30 in the Brussels hemicycle. Europeans for Fair Roaming will be there to report “live” so make sure you follow us onwww.fairroaming.org and www.twitter.com/fairroaming.

 

Pas facile d’écrire une chronique dans l’entre deux tours de l’élection présidentielle. Il s’agit de ne parler ni de l’un ni de l’autre. Comment faire lorsqu’il s’agit de traiter de la question européenne ? Celle-ci est centrale et tous les champs de la vie économique, sociale, politique, internationale, toutes les relations internationales, celles de l’approvisionnement des énergies, des choix diplomatiques, celles des conflits et des relations interculturelles ou inter-civilisationnelles parfois même inter-religieuses concernent ou intéressent les dimensions européennes.  Celle de l’Union comme celle du Conseil de l’Europe. L’Europe des 27 comme celle des 47.

D’ailleurs l’Europe a été bien peu abordée durant cette campagne. Et au matin du grand débat, le thème n’était annoncé qu’en toute fin de programme soit vers 23h30. On se demandait si les deux prétendants auraient encore quelques forces pour développer le sujet central de notre vie quotidienne mais complètement occulté par une montée en puissance des extrêmes de gauche et de droite.

Pour amener les candidats à parler d’Europe, je tente de placer le 9 mai comme jour férié à la place du 8 que plus personne ne considère dans l’Union comme un jour chômé. Ce n’est pas une fête tout au plus une commémoration. Par contre faire du 9 mai, journée de l’Europe, temps officiel de la fête des Européens pourrait avoir du sens. Le temps pourrait être de nature à développer le sentiment d’appartenance à l’Union qui fait cruellement défaut. Installer dans sa compréhension l’importance de la citoyenneté européenne, ses droits. Notamment a-t-on oublié que les citoyens de l’Union peuvent voter aux élections locales et européennes lorsqu’ils demeurent dans un autre pays que le leur d’origine ? A-t-on oublié que le citoyen européen est éligible pour les fonctions de conseiller municipal et de député européen ? A-t-on oublié que chaque citoyen est protégé par le droit de représentation consulaire ?

Une citoyenneté qui mériterait d’être approfondie. Peut être et je devais rêver ce thème devrait être abordé comme d’ailleurs la gouvernance économique devrait être au centre du débat.

Un 9 mai qui tombe cette année trois jours après que le président de la République française sera élu. Il se préparera à sa prise de fonction et entrera dans le cercle très fermé du Conseil européen où siègent les chefs d’Etats et de gouvernement sous la présidence du belge Van Rompuy. Arrivé là il s’agira de reprendre les chantiers ouverts par le conseil.

Plus modestement à Brest, la Maison de l’Europe organise pour le 9 mai un séminaire autour de la question des jumelages. Ces derniers rencontrent des difficultés pour recruter et trouver des financements. La question posée est celle de la citoyenneté européenne. Les jumelages en sont ils toujours des artisans ?

Je terminerai cette chronique comme je l’ai commencée. Pas un mot sur les candidats. Mais je fais mienne cette citation du Cardinal a propos de l’élection des papes : « il ne s’agit pas de voter pour celui qui plait le plus mais celui qui est le plus à même de diriger l’Eglise ». Voilà une phrase qui s’adapte parfaitement à l’élection présidentielle française et à la capacité du président élu à peser sur les choix européens.

Emmanuel Morucci

 

L’Initiative Citoyenne Européenne (ICE) est entrée en vigueur lundi 1er avril 2012. Organisée par le Comité Economique et Social Européen (CESE) et le Comité des Régions (CdR), la conférence sonnait comme une dernière mise au point avant son lancement. Elle permettait également aux deux comités consultatifs de l’Union Européenne (UE) d’éclairer leurs rôles dans la mise en œuvre de cette innovation politique.

On Fools day, EurActiv published a spoof titled “Belgians submit Citizens’ Initative to make ‘frites’ their own“. It was EurActiv Publisher Christophe Leclercq’s idea to highlight by an April spoof the European Citizen Initiative, officially launched on the same day 1 April.
The story was realistically written by my distinguished colleague Frédéric Simon.

Too realistically maybe…
Much to our surprise, it became serious news in many countries. In my country Bulgaria, it was quoted by bTV, the biggest public TV station, as real news, and the respected website Novinite.com carried the story, quoting bTV. Maybe as a follow up of the Schengen disputes, a special emphasis was brought to the reported possible blockade of the Belgian border by angry French farmers…
In Russia, the high profile RIA Novosti carried the news, and even their Brussels correspondent Alexander Shishlo signed the story. Probably as a consequence, many websites took up the story, in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Some are very professional and highly specialised, like the website “The Food Monitor“. But my personal favourite among them is a Ukrainian one called “Centre for Investigative Journalism“.
 http://focus.ua/foreign/225847/

 http://delo.ua/world/belgija-otstaivaet-…

 http://telegraf.by/2012/04/ispanskie-uch…

 http://world.comments.ua/2012/04/02/3313…

 http://allretail.com.ua/news/29788

 http://www.agro.bg/news/article34859.htm…

Guest Post by Dan Luca

When it comes to involve and engage citizens in the decision-making process on a European level, there is confusion about terminology.

Some see “asking the interested citizens what they prefer” as active public participation. It is not: “asking the interested citizen” falls under consultation. Consultation is a top-down professional or bureaucrat-led process. At best, consultation produces choices from which the selected consultants can choose. Worst case scenario: community preferences are ignored, because they do not fit some preconceived model of “what the public needs”, designed in the minds of bureaucrats, politicians and professionals.

Participation is a process of setting up structures, within which professionals or bureaucrats become facilitators of a broad-based deliberative process. Participation is more difficult and time-consuming than consultation. It requires the leaders of the process to have the commitment to public participation and at the same time also the techniques to enact it. It requires skills in working with groups, but also skills in keeping the lobby group representatives or vociferous individuals to dominate and unduly influence proceedings.

Often enough there is big confusion between consultation and participation processes. People taking part in a consultation process can be disappointed and disillusioned when the results clearly show that their recommendations / opinions / ideas have not been taken up. So when questions like “why are citizens not engaged?” – Well, it’s just not structured to facilitate engagement.

Dan Luca,  Casa Europei

Le 26 janvier s’est tenue à Bruxelles un conférence préparatoire au lancement. Elle marque une étape décisive dans les derniers préparatifs consacrés à l’initiative citoyenne européenne (ICE). Parmi les intervenants, citons le vice-président de la Commission européenne et responsable de cette initiative, M. Maroš Šefčovič, le ministre danois des affaires européennes, M. Nicolai Wammen, des députés européens qui ont joué un rôle important dans l’élaboration de cet instrument, ainsi que des représentants à haut niveau de Facebook, Google, Twitter et Dailymotion.Ils veulent s’engager et apporter leur expérience  

The European eDemocracy Award is a well-established and international annual award prepared and coordinated by Fondation EurActiv PoliTech in the framework of the World eGov Forum, organised by André Santini, former Minister, Deputy of Hauts-de-Seine, Mayor of Issy-les-Moulineaux, France.

The European eDemocracy Award 2011 will take place at Issy-les-Moulineaux (France) on 10-12 October 2011 and will recognize and reward the best European eDemocracy applications, projects or initiatives amongst EU27 countries. This year our focus will be on applications, initiatives and projects preparing for the European Citizens Initiative to be launched in 2012.

 

 

Would you like to apply? Send a short summary of the initiative in Word format and its link to  socialmedia at euractiv.com before 1 September 2011!

The government has launched a new website where people can post petitions for signature.  If a petition gets at least 100,000 signatures, it will may be debated in the House of Commons.  The petitions website is here http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/index.html.

One of the first campaigns to be launched is the so-called Restore Justice campaign, arguing for the restoration of the death penalty for murderers of police officers and children.  (There is also a rival petition, defending the status quo.)  If the restoration petition gets its 100,000 signatures, which is not impossible, the issues that it raises are more complex than just those of law and order.  The petition itself asks:

“the government to review all treaties and international commitments which may inhibit the ability of Parliament to restore capital punishment.”

Those treaties include the Lisbon treaty, which gave legal effect to the Charter of Fundamental Rights, in which Article 2, “Right to life”, reads:

1. Everyone has the right to life.

2. No one shall be condemned to the death penalty, or executed.

To reintroduce the death penalty in the UK would require withdrawal from this part of the Charter.  How that could be done, nobody knows.  The Lisbon treaty does not make provision for a member state to pick and choose some bits of the treaty and not others, but rather for a member state to withdraw altogether.

The proponents of the petition are themselves aware of the complications.  Paul Staines, a well-known blogger, who launched the idea, tweeted that “restoring the death penalty has profoundly eurosceptic implications”.  Perhaps this is what they want.

The European Movement itself does not have a formal view of whether or not the death penalty should be brought back, but its members and supporters may well have views of their own.  Here are the rival petitions, if you wish to sign one or other of them:

In favour of death penalty  http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/138

Against  http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/1090

On April 1^st 2012 an interesting innovation of the Lisbon Treaty will see the reality. At that date, the implementing legislation for Art. 14 EUT will enter into force and enable a minimum of one million citizens from at least seven member countries requesting the European Commission to launch legislative action in areas of common European interest that fall within the scope of its competence.

Despite the restrictive pre-conditions 10 initiatives are reportedly already under preparation. But we should not expect a flood of proposals to emerge from citizens initiatives:

• Most EU legislation is too technical to lend itself easily to citizens initiatives. Only political, environmental, social and cultural areas offer some scope. But here the EU competence for legislative action is quite narrow.

• The Commission will have to take a critical look at each request and check its common interest as well as its compatibility with the Treaty and existing legislation.

It is therefore difficult to project the use citizens will make from this new instrument. Civic associations might wish to exploit it to make their views more widely known without hoping for quick or any legislative action. They might be happy to provoke a European debate on issues like climate age, nuclear and renewable energies, ageing, obesity, educational standards, youth unemployment or retirement age. There should be no lack of subjects to be picked up.

To unite one million signatures from seven member states will require citizens to connect by electronic networks and to use a common language. Organised groups across national borders like Greenpeace will have a competitive edge over private citizens.

The new tool will no doubt give a boost to trans-national associations, on-line networks and the wider use of English as the European “lingua franca”.

The mere launch of an initiative is likely to provoke an EU-wide debate, provided the authors pick a sensitive issue of interest to many citizens throughout Europe. This would be positive and go beyond the initial objectives of the Treaty innovation.

But as a start, one or two NG0s should introduce a well-targeted, concrete proposal for amending or introducing legislation and try to obtain Commission backing for it.

Check out the dedicated BlogActiv Blog on:  The European Citizens’ Initiative as a novel “participatory instrument” of the Lisbon Treaty to empower European Union Citizens in the decision-making processes of the Union Goto :  ECI.BlogActiv.eu

 

Join the debate at the bottom of this post !

Last Wednesday, BlogActiv.eu hosted its 1^st BlogActiv Bloggers Café bringing together around 30 EU bloggers and European Citizens’ Initiative stakeholders.

This Bloggers Café presented the audience BlogActiv.eu new design and the Online Debate on “Stakeholders’ Community to Federate European Citizens’ Initiatives” in partnership with BlogActiv.eu.

The debate around the European Citizens’ Initiative has definitely started at this event.

After Daniel VAN LERBERGHE, Social Media Director and PoliTech Founder, has presented this online debate, many participants have shown a great interest in this “participatory instrument”, first of its kind in a transnational environment like the EU.

Now the Tweetosphere as well as the bloggosphere is engaged ! Show your engagement and interest by actively contributing online!

Further reading:

Daniel VAN LERBERGHE, “Shape the ECI by Contributing Early: Stakeholders’ Community Federating European Citizens’ Initiatives”, presentation (13 July 2011)

 

Join the debate here !

Mr. Jahier, President of Group III, launched the initiative to  organise a seminar on the European Citizens’ Initiative, the most innovative  and concrete transnational tool of the Lisbon Treaty. He stated that this seminar offered  the possibility to bring together forty participants from outside the “Schuman box”. Coming from nineteen European countries and representing a wide range of interests within civil society, they initiated the first steps towards creating networks amongst them. For Luca Jahier, “the ECI, after ten years of preparatory work, now represents a major opportunity for citizens to be active at EU level and the possibility to increase what we call the European public space”.  For Mrs. Sigmund, former President of the EESC, after having retraced the history of the ECI, she stated that ”the ECI is a communicational instrument between people from different countries with different languages and cultures, who are aiming at the same objectives which will allow them to develop a common cross-border identity that could lead them to see themselves as more European, rather than simply, French, Polish, Swedish or Romanian”.

From the point of view of the European Parliament, Mr. Häfner, MEP, said that the question of democracy is the key element of the period we are living in: “the ECI is a first contribution towards achieving direct citizen’s participation in the formulation of European policy, highlighting the desires and problems of the European citizens. It is an incredibly important step towards Europe but it is also of worldwide interest and in the coming months, people will see if it succeeds, or not.”  For him, the most difficult trap is the legal limitation of the ECI to the Commission’s competency, but without any possibility to amend the Treaty.

Further reading:

Welcome to our online debate entitled:  ”Stakeholders’ Community to Federate European Citizens’ Initiatives”

Join the debate at the bottom of this post !

European Citizens’ Initiatives (ECI) as well as Political Parties’ debates and campaigns could play a key role in the running up to 2014 European Elections.

We can distinguish 3 main phases:

• Phase 1 – April 2012: Official Launch of the European Citizens’ Initiative (TEU 2009, Art.11.4). EurActiv, together with Fondation EurActiv PoliTech and BlogActiv.eu, is playing a key role in making the ECI a success.
• Phase 2 – 2013: European Political platforms leading to the choice of candidates and programmes will take into account successful ECIs, surveys and national elections.
• Phase 3 – 1^st half of 2014: European Elections’ Campaigns take off complementing European Parliament and parties communication.

The common denominator between these topics is the CITIZEN.

Given the very low threshold required to register and launch an ECI (‘at least 7 citizens, who are residents of at least 7 different Member States’), one can assume thousands of ECI will be submitted, but only tens or hundreds will make it through the whole process and force the European Commission to take a policy view.

Therefore, potential initiatives will need a one-stop-shop for building alliances amongst an heterogeneous community of stakeholders to meet, deliberate, rate, compare and in some cases join forces.

Prior to broaden the debates triggered by individual initiatives, there is a genuine opportunity to:

• Shape the ECI official process, which is not 100% clear yet.

• Empower a novel and neutral Initiactive.eu civil society-based platform to be launch this Autumn, which aims to provide online tools to build alliances across stakeholders in regard to campaigning for, proving of the achievement of the requested quorum of supporting statements and federating European Citizens Initiatives.

• Gather momentum behind potentially successful initiatives and prepare for policy and Media impact.

BlogActiv.eu in partnership with Fondation EurActiv PoliTech and its core-partners is hosting this debate for early innovators and commentators, paving the grounds for Initiactive.eu platform to be publicly launched.

Please find below the main questions, we would like to have your views on during this Online Debate:

• Question 1: Will the European Citizens’ Initiative transform the European democratic life and reduce the widening ‘Democratic Gap’ between its citizens and decision-makers?
  
• Question 2: Will the European Citizens’ Initiative “bring Europe closer to its Citizens”?
  
• Question 3: Will Internet and Social Media unleash the potential of the European Citizens’ Initiative?
  
• Question 4: Will the ECI become a ‘participatory instrument’ for stakeholders to shape Europe’s Agenda?
  
• Question 5: Will the ECI change EU decision-making balance of power? Are European political parties ready for the ECI? Will the ECI be an opportunity to create pan-European political parties in light of the 2014 European Elections?
  
• Question 6: Can 1 million citizens be ignored in a democracy? Will the ECI lead to more frustration or be a success for Europe? What do YOU think? What are YOUR opinions?
  
• Question 7: What are YOUR ECIs? How can YOU help US federating ECIs? How should Initiactive.eu look like? What are you expecting from such a platform?
  

 

I saw complaints from what appears to be heavy and even abusive  procedures with  diploma legalisation in Bulgaria, in various emails, letters, on-line forums etc. It could be useful if such information was more centralised. In any case, I’m happy to gather such experiences.

Like many in Brussels involved in policy debates, I rolled my eyes when I had learnt about the inclusion of a Citizens’ Initiative section in the Lisbon Treaty. Perhaps it was my well-honed, smug, academic elitism, but I had visions of hordes of the great unwashed coming to Brussels to clog up policy processes with their radical agendas – a million signatures to have the Commission deny the Holocaust, ban pesticides, expel all foreigners or stop research in biotechnology – with social media tools today, you can get a million people to support pretty well anything. Then, to my surprise, I had a moment of clarity.

First of all, there will be a lot of single issue politics, connected to lifestyle/hobby groups like hunting, bird watching or music downloading. A million signatures to abolish copyrights will be no match for them. There will be also a lot of emotionally loaded political questions. Banning nukes, GMO agriculture products or bailing out Assange? I bet that you can collect a million signatures for such issues in Europe almost overnight. Or collecting signatures for big business 10 euros each? Even signing up, too.