Power to the people?

Initiative is supposed to give citizens a direct say, but concerns remain over red tape and the time-frames involved.

Doubts are growing over the likely effectiveness of the European Union’s experiment in connecting with its citizens through direct democracy.

Maroš Šefcovic, the European commissioner for inter-institutional relations and administration, who is expected on 31 March to unveil his proposal on how the EU citizens’ initiative will work in practice, has described it as a way to take “the EU outside the ‘Brussels beltway’ and give it full democratic expression”.

This new petition procedure, created by the Lisbon treaty, is intended to give citizens their first direct say in setting the EU’s legislative agenda. It is uncharted territory for the EU institutions, and the detail is posing challenges for the European Commission as it drafts the rules.

The EU measure will not have the same impact as Switzerland’s referenda (where a recent populist drive led to a ban on minarets) or as California’s ballot initiatives – which have given the state a reputation as being close to ungovernable. Unlike those systems, which bypass parliaments to give voters a direct say in new rules and regulations, the EU initiative gives citizens only the power to request the Commission to consider new legislation (and only in areas of Commission competence).

Vague instructions

The Lisbon treaty says that the citizens’ initiative has to include “no fewer than one million citizens” from “a significant number of member states”. Interpreting this vague instruction, the EU’s European affairs ministers in January agreed that the “significant” number of member states should be one-third of the 27 EU nations, or at least nine of them.

The detailed rules are likely to force organisers to make sure that the number of collected signatures reaches a certain national threshold as well, ensuring the initiative is broadly representative. An initiative will have to be filed on a special EU website, and according to EU officials, will face a preliminary filtering from the Commission on whether a petition, once started, is likely to be admissible.

From the time an initiative is submitted to the Commission, organisers will have one year to amass the needed signatures, either via email or on paper. Officials have not yet worked out verification procedures to ensure the authenticity of the signatures, although some form of co-operation with national authorities is already envisaged.

Nor is there yet any clear idea of how to handle initiatives that arise from campaigns via social media sites such as Facebook, which are becoming increasingly popular ways of hosting petitions.

But the EU rules make it easier for citizens to submit a petition than in many EU member states which have tougher rules on such initiatives. Seventeen of the 27 member states have some mechanisms through which citizens can collect signatures to push an issue onto the government agenda, but their qualifying thresholds are higher than the EU proposal.

Backers of the plan fear the EU’s experiment could go badly wrong if the Commission is too stringent in its admissibility requirements on the expected first wave of petitions.

“In the beginning there will be a lot of attempts to use the process,” says Bruno Kaufmann, president of the Initiative and Referendum Institute Europe, a think-tank. “The Commission should be very keen to establish a process for that to make sure people in the services are well prepared.”

Kaufmann, whose group is a strong supporter of the initiative, worries that the measures could fall victim to red tape, as well as to the lack of strict time-frames for Commission responses. Such delays could feed frustration and even deeper disillusion among voters about the EU.

Rules on finance

The rules will also include a requirement for organisers of initiatives to provide information on who is financing the petition. This is intended to weed out lobbyists and other interest groups, and has won support from those who have studied citizen initiative plans elsewhere in the world.

Bob Stern, president of the Los Angeles-based Centre for Government Studies and an expert on California’s initiative, is clear that the EU should avoid the pitfalls of California’s system. He warns the EU to include tight spending limits to ensure the measure conserves its grassroots aims. “In California, if you have enough money you can qualify almost anything,” he says.

There are also worries that the system could be manipulated by special interest groups on everything from biotech crops to Turkey’s EU membership talks, precipitating gridlock within the EU’s already cumbersome decision-making processes.

Nevertheless, the EU move into direct democracy is seen as a necessary attempt to spur greater debate over Europe, reflecting a growing trend worldwide. “It is a brilliant idea…but it depends on how it is implemented,” says Diana Wallis, a UK Liberal MEP. But the procedure must “conform to European rights and values”, to eliminate extremist petitions, she said, and the Commission’s filtering of initiatives must strike a fair balance so as not to disillusion citizens.

“It will help, but it won’t be a panacea,” said Stern. “It is a net plus, but not nirvana.”