A Good Start? The ECI, Three Years on

The European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI), the measure enshrined in the Lisbon Treaty by which one million citizens can invite the Commission to prepare a legislative proposal, became fully operational in April 2012. In the first three years since then three initiatives secured the requisite one million signatures across seven member states, yet so far no legislative proposals have originated from them. Whilst demonstrating that fears of legislative overload were perhaps unfounded, this state of affairs also poses the question of what exactly the point of the ECI is. A measure which gives citizens the same powers of initiative as the Council and the Parliament but which is yet to feed into the legislative process could be considered something of a failure, or at least a triumph of style over substance. This paper acknowledges that the ability of ECI to result in a legislative outcome is vital for its, and the Commission’s long-term credibility but that focusing only on the issue of legislative initiatives overshadows much of interest in this novel development. It asks whether the rather minimal legislative impact necessarily means that the ECI has got off to a bad start. In doing so it considers the non-legislative features of the ECI, including the adaptation of key actors (Commission, Parliament and civil society), the potential for transnational debate, and the national context of this European initiative. The broader normative question of whether this form of crowdsourcing policy proposals is a good start to the legislative process is also reflected upon.