3 European citizens' initiative
| (31486)
8399/10
COM(10) 119
+ ADD 1
| Draft Regulation on the citizens' initiative
Commission staff working document: Outcome of the public consultation on the Green Paper on a European citizens' initiative
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| Legal base | Article 24 TFEU; co-decision; QMV
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| Document originated | 31 March 2010
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| Deposited in Parliament | 25 May 2010
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| Department | Foreign and Commonwealth Office
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| Basis of consideration | EM of 22 June 2010 and Minister's letter of 13 July 2010
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| Previous Committee Report | None; but see (31169) 16195/09: HC 5-iii (2009-10), chapter 16 (9 December 2009)
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| To be discussed in Council | Date not known
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| Committee's assessment | Politically important
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| Committee's decision | For debate in European Committee B
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Background
3.1 Article 11(4) of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) contains
a new right. It provides that:
"Not less than one million citizens who are nationals of
a significant number of Member States may take the initiative
of inviting the European Commission, within the framework of its
powers, to submit any appropriate proposal on matters where citizens
consider that a legal act of the Union is required for the purpose
of implementing the Treaties.
"The procedures and conditions required for
such a citizens' initiative shall be determined in accordance
with the first paragraph of Article 24 of the Treaty on the Functioning
of the European Union".
The first paragraph of Article 24 requires the Council
and European Parliament to adopt regulations on the conditions
and procedures for citizens' initiatives.
3.2 In November 2009, the Commission invited views
on the ten questions set out in its Green Paper on the citizens'
initiative.[9] Views were
invited on, for example:
- The minimum number of Member
States from which citizens must come — would one third of
the total number of Member States constitute a "significant
number of Member States" as required by Article 11 (4) TEU?
- The form and wording of a citizens'
initiative — would it be sufficient and appropriate to require
that an initiative should state clearly the subject-matter and
objectives of the proposal on which the Commission is invited
to act? What other requirements, if any, should there be about
the wording and form of an initiative?
- The requirements for the collection
and authentication of signatures — should there be a common
set of procedural requirements for the collection, verification
and authentication of signatures? To what extent (if at all) should
a Member State be able to specify its own requirements on these
matters? Are EU-wide common procedures necessary to ensure that
EU citizens can support a citizens' initiative regardless of their
country of residence? Should citizens be able to support an initiative
online? If so, what security and authentication arrangements should
there be?
3.3 In his Explanatory Memorandum of 7 December 2009,
the then Minister for Europe at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office
(Chris Bryant) told the previous Committee that the Government
broadly supported the Green Paper and would send the Commission
its response to the questions.
3.4 The previous Committee welcomed the Commission's
decision to invite views on the practical questions posed in the
Green Paper before it drafted the implementing legislation required
by Article 24 TFEU. It cleared the Green Paper from scrutiny and
asked the Minister for a copy of the Government's written response
to it.
3.5 He provided a copy on 16 February 2010. It said
that the Government agreed with most of the Commission's suggested
answers but took a different view on a few. For example, the Government
did not believe that there should be common requirements for the
collection, verification and authentication of signatures —
those were matters which should be left entirely to the discretion
of each Member State.
The Commission's draft of the Regulation
3.6 The Commission says that it received over 300
responses to the Green Paper and took them into account in producing
its draft Regulation on the procedures and conditions for citizens'
initiatives. The responses are summarised in the Commission staff
working document (ADD 1) which accompanies the draft Regulation.
3.7 The main provisions of the Commission's draft
of the Regulation are as follows:
- the organiser of a petition
should be either a citizen of the EU or, if a legal person or
organisation, established in a Member State;
- signatories of a citizens' initiative should
be citizens of the EU and meet the age requirements (18) for eligibility
to vote in elections for the European Parliament;
- before initiating the collection of statements
of support for an initiative, the organiser should register the
initiative with the Commission and provide the information listed
in the Regulation;
- the Commission should register proposed initiatives
unless they are abusive, frivolous or "manifestly against
the values" of the EU;[10]
- statements of support may be made in writing
or electronically and should be made within 12 months of the registration
of the initiative;
- online systems for the collection of statements
of support should comply with the requirements of Article 6(4)
of the Regulation and organisers should obtain from their Member
States certification that their systems are compliant;
- to be valid, an initiative should be supported
by statements by a minimum number of citizens in at least a third
of the Member States — the minimum number for each State
is specified in Annex 1 of the Regulation (for example, for the
UK and Italy the minimum number is 54,750; for Germany it is 72,000;
and for Luxembourg and Malta it is 4,500);
- after collecting 300,000 statements of support
coming from at least three Member States, the organiser should
ask the Commission for a decision on the admissibility of the
initiative;
- within two months of receiving the request, the
Commission should notify the organiser of its decision; the Commission
should decide that the initiative is admissible if it concerns
a matter about which the EU could adopt a legal act for the purpose
of implementing the Treaties and about which the Treaties give
the Commission's power to make a proposal;
- if the initiative is admissible and when the
organiser has collected at least a million statements of support,
the organiser should submit all the statements to a Member State
for verification and certification; verification and certification
should be completed within three months of submission and would
be the responsibility of the Member State in the territory of
which the statements were collected and will be stored;
- the organiser should send the certificates to
the Commission, which should publish the initiative on the Commission's
website and, within four months, set out in a communication its
conclusions on the initiative and the action (if any) it intends
to take — the Commission should publish the communication
and send it to the organiser, the Council and the European Parliament;
- Member States should ensure that the organisers
of initiatives are liable under criminal and civil law for infringements
of the Regulation; and
- five years after it comes into effect, the Commission
should report to the Council and the European Parliament on the
implementation of the Regulation.
The Government's view of the Commission's draft
3.8 In his Explanatory Memorandum of 22 June, the
Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington) says that the citizens'
initiative is in line with the Government's proposal that petitions
which attract 100,000 signatures should be eligible for debate
in the House.
3.9 While the Government agrees with some of the
provisions of the draft Regulation, it has concerns about others.
For example, the Government:
- considers that the proposed
Regulation is "overly bureaucratic and risks alienating the
very citizens that the [European citizens' initiative] is intended
to engage";[11]
- notes that, in the absence of an Impact Assessment
of the draft Regulation, a firm judgment cannot be made on whether
the proposals would lead to successful initiatives that are representative
of the views of the people of the EU;
- does not agree that the minimum age to be eligible
to make a statement in support of an initiative need necessarily
be voting age;
- does not agree that 300,000 statements need be
collected before the Commission decides if the initiative is admissible
— "the Commission should take a view on competence
as early as possible in the process";[12]
- does not agree that Member States should be responsible
for the verification and certification of statements of support
— there is insufficient evidence that the initiative would
be systematically abused to the extent that such verification
would be necessary or desirable.
3.10 The Minister notes that the Commission has sent
the draft Regulation to the European Data Protection Commissioner
and looks forward to seeing his opinion on it.
3.11 He also notes that, according to the Commission,
the cost of the citizens' initiative to the EU budget would be
€784,000 in 2010, €394,000 in 2011 and, subsequently,
€354,000 a year. The cost to Member States of verifying statements
of support has not been quantified. The Commission hopes that
the Regulation will be adopted by the end of 2010.
The General Affairs Council's draft of the Regulation
3.12 On 14 June, the General Affairs Council agreed
a revised draft of the Regulation.[13]
The main differences between the Council's and the Commission's
drafts are as follows.
- the Council's draft provides
that the Commission should reject an application to register an
initiative if it is manifestly outside the scope of the Treaties
as well as if it would be against the values of the EU;
- new Recital 11a encourages the Commission to
promote the development of open source software which would comply
with the technical and security provisions of the Regulation and
would be available for use by the organisers of all initiatives;
- the Council has amended Recital 15 to say that
Member States' verification of citizens' statements of support
may be based on checks of random samples;
- under the Council's draft, the Commission would
be required to report on the implementation of the Regulation
after three years rather than five;
- the Council has amended Annex III to provide
that the Member States listed in Part A need not require signatories
of statements of support to provide additional personal information
(the UK is named in Part A);
- it has also added a Part B to Annex III specifying
the additional identification which other signatories would have
to provide — the requirements differ from country to country:
for example, Austrian signatories would have to provide the number
of either a passport or an identity card whereas a Bulgarian signatory
would have to provide his or her "single civil number";
- the Council's draft reduces from 300,000 to 100,000
the number of statements of support that the organiser would have
to collect before asking the Commission for a decision on the
admissibility of the proposed citizens' initiative;
- within a period of three months after receiving
an organiser's request for verification of the statements of support,
the Member States should complete the verification "on the
basis of checks, in accordance with national law and practice,
as appropriate" (Council's draft, Article 9(2)); and
- the Council has added a requirement that the
personal data Member States receive when asked to verify statements
of support may be used only for the purpose of verification and
they must destroy the statements of support within a month of
issuing the certificate of verification.
The Minister's letter of 13 July 2010
3.13 On 13 July, the Minister sent us the Council's
revised draft of the Regulation. In his covering letter, he tells
us that, at the General Affairs Council on 14 June, the Government
opposed the Spanish Presidency's proposal that the Council agree
a common approach on the revised draft. The Government made clear
that it would abstain because the draft Regulation was still under
scrutiny in Parliament and that it had policy concerns about the
draft. While there was sufficient support for the Presidency's
proposal for the general approach to obtain agreement, the Council
accepted that it should have further negotiations on the text
because of the concerns of the UK and a number of other Member
States.
3.14 The Minister's letter adds that:
- the Government regards the
changes the Council has made to the Commission's draft as a step
in the right direction;
- but the proposal remains over-bureaucratic and
burdensome on both Member States and citizens;
- the Government wishes the Regulation to be amended
to give Member States greater discretion about how to verify statements
of support and, indeed, whether to verify them at all;
- it will also "be seeking more thought and
development into the idea of a single website for the collection
of online signatures, with no role for Member States in certification";[14]
and
- the Government agrees with the French, Czech,
Italian and Lithuanian Governments that the Commission should
decide the admissibility of a proposed initiative before statements
of support are collected.
Conclusion
3.15 We are grateful to the Minister for sending
us the Council's amended draft of the Regulation and for his comments
on it. We are also glad that the Council is to have further negotiations
on the text. In our view, some of the provisions require clarification.
For example, Article 9(2) of the Council's draft says that Member
States may verify statements of support by making checks "in
accordance with national law and practice"; the meaning of
those words is unclear, as is the reference to "open source
software" in Recital 11a.
3.16 Our main concern, however, is not with the
drafting of the Regulation, important though that is. It is with
the substance of the rules for citizens' initiatives. In our view,
the rules should be as few and simple as is consistent with the
prevention of the abuse of the process. This raises questions
such as:
- is it necessary for the
admissibility of an initiative to be decided in two stages, initially
when the organiser applies to the Commission to register the initiative
and subsequently when a specified number of signatures has been
collected; or should admissibility be decided once, before any
statements of support are collected?; and
- is it necessary for Member States to verify
statements of support and what would be the risks if there were
no requirement for verification?
There is scope for legitimate differences of opinion
about what the rules should be and, indeed, about the desirability
of citizens' initiatives in parliamentary democracies. Because
the political importance of these questions, we recommend the
draft Regulation for debate in European Committee B.
9 (31169) 16195/09: see HC 5-iii (2009-10), chapter
16 (9 December 2009). Back
10
Draft Regulation, Article 4(4). Back
11
Minister's Explanatory Memorandum, paragraph 29, final sentence. Back
12
Ibid, paragraph 33. Back
13
10626/2/10. Back
14
Minister's letter, penultimate paragraph, fourth sentence. Back
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