Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-12-15-Speech-3-097"
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"en.20101215.6.3-097"2
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"Madam President, today the European Union is opening up to participatory democracy. It is not yet direct democracy, citizens will not take the decisions themselves, but they do win the right to question directly, publicly, in huge numbers, those who take the decisions in Europe, over the head of their government and their elected representatives.
In short, here we have a simple, innovative, democratic procedure. It is now the citizens’ turn to take the floor.
From now on, the citizens will enjoy the same power of political initiative as that enjoyed here by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. We have benefited, as Mrs Gurmai has said, from the excellent preparatory work carried out by Commissioner Šefčovič and his teams, and from the intelligent and efficient support by the Belgian Presidency.
On the part of Parliament, the text is the result of the work of four rapporteurs, a gang of four, including you, Madam President. We are honoured by your presence.
We wanted to come up with the simplest, most citizen-friendly procedure for the public. Who might participate? Citizens, that is to say natural persons, all citizens, including, possibly, elected representatives, but only European citizens. The Treaty leaves no doubt on the subject.
The right to participate in the citizens’ initiative is now yet one more of the privileges enjoyed by citizens throughout Europe. Who might launch the initiative? It only needs seven citizens in an organising committee, not 300 000 as the Commission proposed, nor 100 000 as the Council envisaged, seven citizens from seven different countries, that is a quarter of the Member States.
Who should be contacted for information if one wants to launch an initiative? The Commission itself will publish a guide to the citizens’ initiative and will set up a specialised point of contact. What is the procedure? Extraordinarily simple. A single request to register the initiative and check its admissibility. The criteria for admissibility? The Treaty, the whole Treaty and nothing but the Treaty, including the Charter of Fundamental Rights. What support can be used for an initiative? Any kind of support: political, financial, local, national, European, international, lobbies, NGOs, churches, and so on.
Just one condition: total transparency. Those who are invited to sign must know what lies behind the initiative. So it is up to the citizens to assume their responsibilities. What are the formalities for collecting the signatures? Incredibly simple. Signatures on paper but also through the Internet. Of course, it is only the Member States that can monitor them, but we have been careful, as Mrs Gurmai has said, to ensure that the forms are harmonised to the greatest possible extent.
In the long term, it is a veritable single European system which will have to be adopted in all 27 countries and a third of Member States are already prepared for it.
Finally, what will the political outcomes be? This is a point on which Parliament has been very insistent. Indeed, in accordance with the Treaty, the Commission will be the only judge of whether or not to provide legislative follow-up to a successful initiative. Therefore the Commission must be protected against political pressure seeking to make legislation proliferate at a time when the Union already regulates too much. However, at the same time, the citizens must be protected against the risk that there is no political follow-up in cases where the Commission deems supplementary legislation inappropriate. Hence the creation of two new rights to benefit authors of successful initiatives: the right to be received by the Commission to present their motion and the right to a public hearing, which can take place before the European Parliament itself."@en1
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