Change of seasons: NEW(s) on the European Citizens’ Initiative

The summer holiday was hopefully a break from the whirlwind of events, a chance to reflect on what we have experienced in the first half of the year and come back with new ideas and inspiration in our respective fields of work. This certainly was the case for those involved in a European Citizens’ Initiative – both from the side of organisers, and that of the offered support on the European Citizens’ Initiative Forum.

The amount of activity attests to EU citizens’ demand to be better heard and involved in the EU policy agenda setting. By launching or supporting a European Citizens’ Initiative, not only are they expressing their concerns, but they are also proposing solutions.

In this edition of ECAS’ Highlight of the Week, we bring into focus the recent new(s) around this tool for participatory democracy.

On September 1st, ‘Voters without Borders‘ officially launched the collection of signatures in support of the initiative. In its simple explanation, the organisers are calling for ‘full political rights for EU citizens’. But the set out proposals tug at a deeper issue. As Beniamino Brunati, one of the organisers, explains “such change would contribute to leave behind an outdated, State-based system which underestimates the level of mobility the European Union has reached and would provide full meaning to the notion of European citizenship”.

This idea is in response to what Beniamino calls the paradox of European democracy – seventeen million Europeans living in a Member State different from their country of origin are often with no right to vote because of legal or bureaucratic barriers. And yet, their opinion could potentially overturn the result of important consultations.

Getting ready to start the process of collecting signatures is another recently registered European citizens’ initiative. ‘Freedom to Share‘ seeks to legalise file sharing for personal purposes by changing copyright and related rights and setting up a mechanism to remunerate fairly the authors and other rights holders. The organisers note the evolving of file sharing over the years, but question if this has been mainly in favor of rights-holder companies.

The proposal is based on two paragraphs of art. 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights stating:

(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
(2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Instead, the current situation, as described by one of the organisers in a new blog post published on the Forum, is that “unfortunately, we are faced with a typical example of market failure: rights holders are in a “prisoner dilemma” situation, and fail to agree to allow users to share their works. Legislative action is therefore necessary to solve this situation, which harms society at large, by forcing rights holders and users to resort to unnecessary intermediaries“.