Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-12-15-Speech-3-096"
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"en.20101215.6.3-096"2
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"Madam President, the European citizens’ initiative is a unique opportunity. It is the first time that European citizens can get together and let us know, with one strong voice, if they think that we, the European decision-makers, are not doing our job properly or missing out important issues.
We badly need this. In a time when only 42% of the people who are entitled to vote in European elections take the time to actually vote, every new European instrument – especially an instrument like the ECI – is of great importance. However, we realise that the high expectations that surround the ECI may lead to disappointment and frustration. We can avoid this with a regulation that provides for its safe and efficient use, and we can help to bridge the famous gap between ourselves and European citizens. I would like to welcome the citizens here as well.
Mr Lamassoure, Ms Wallis, Mr Häfner and I were all conscious of the huge responsibility on our shoulders. Many points were raised during the discussions and we had to base our work on everyone’s strong sense of compromise. We were lucky to have good partners in this who showed reasonable flexibility and had the same goal as Parliament’s rapporteurs, namely to reach an agreement as soon as possible, while maintaining the quality of our work and making sure that one year after the Treaty of Lisbon we have a regulation for the most citizen-based provision of the Treaty.
I would like to thank Commissioner Šefčovič and the Belgian Presidency, particularly Mr Chastel, and their teams. We should also not forget the Spanish Presidency who contributed to advancing the dossier right at the beginning of the process.
Today we are presenting to you a compromise text which is supported by the Commission and has also been adopted by the Coreper. If we decide to support it and the Council adopts it – which we hope – the regulation can enter into force on 1 January and be applicable 12 months later in 2012.
We are pleased to say that Parliament’s key demands were accepted in the discussions. The admissibility check on an initiative will be based on clear criteria at the point of registration, not after many signatures have already been collected. To ensure the initiatives are well founded and have a European dimension, a citizens’ committee of at least seven members from seven Member States should be set up to register an initiative.
Apart from reducing the risk of unserious initiatives, the citizens’ committee offers incontestable advantages for organisers as well. If the initiators of an ECI are disorganised at the beginning of the process, they have a network and have many language versions of their initiative. They would have significantly less difficulty in collecting one million signatures.
It is clear that, even though the requirement for the citizens’ committee initially seems to be a constraint, it would in reality streamline the rest of the procedure. The Commission will help organisers of an initiative by providing a user-friendly guide and setting up a point of contact. If an initiative manages to collect one million signatures, a proper follow-up will be guaranteed, including a public hearing at Parliament.
The review of the regulation is of crucial importance as this tool is the first of its kind. As per our suggestions, it is extremely useful with regard to the difficult issue of how to verify the signatures. It is up to Member States to do this, but we urged them to demand as little personal information as possible. Member States will have some flexibility in choosing what information is required in each country, but I am glad to say that many of them are going for less data than originally planned. We believe that the regulation reflected in the compromise text is citizen-friendly and does not create cumbersome obligations for, and frustration amongst, the organisers."@en1
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