European Citizens’ Initiatives: voices still going unheard

There is no shortage of diagnoses for what ails European democracy: too technocratic, too distant or too disconnected from ordinary life. In our work at Debating Europe, we consistently try to bridge this gap. Yet we see that many citizens still struggle to explain how legislation from Brussels affects their daily lives. Political scientists often describe this as the democratic deficit: a gap between EU institutions and the citizens they represent, which weakens public confidence in of those who govern. 

The European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI), introduced in 2012, aimed to address this issue. For the first time, it gave citizens the formal right to invite the European Commission to propose legislation directly. Twelve years and twelve initiatives formally answered by the Commission later, the fulfilment of its democratic promise remains a matter of debate. 

Successes and failures 

To qualify, ECIs must gather at least one million signatures from citizens, reaching a threshold in at least seven EU member states. Of 127 registered initiatives, only 14 have met this requirement and just 12 have received a formal response from the Commission.  

Some initiatives have been turned away entirely. The Minority SafePack, Cohesion Policy for Equality and One of Us were each declined on the grounds that adequate EU-level measures were already in place. Others have managed to achieve moderate success. Right2Water, eventually fed into a revision of the Drinking Water Directive in 2020, placing new obligations on member states to improve access to safe water. The Ban Glyphosate initiative produced the 2019 Transparency Regulation, requiring all industry studies submitted to EU food safety bodies to be made publicly available. Whereas Stop Finning secured 13 new customs classification codes for shark products, letting EU authorities track the fin trade through Eurostat data for the first time. 

Meaningful steps, yet in each case, the Commission responded to a secondary aspect of the demand while shelving its legislative core. This pattern of partial or negative engagement is what fuels criticism of the instrument, as it can feel like preaching to deaf ears. This poses the risk of the instrument having the opposite of its intended effect: rather than strengthening trust in EU institutions, it may contribute to citizen disenchantment or disengagement. 

The problem with pluralism 

A challenge inherent to any instrument operating across a pluralistic society of 450 million citizens is that demands will inevitably diverge. This is clear from the contrast between One of Us, which called on the Commission to end funding for any activity presupposing the destruction of human embryos, and My Voice My Choice (MVMC), which called for a dedicated fund to facilitate abortion access across the EU.  

While both crossed the threshold, their outcomes differed. One of Us was rejected whereas MVMC received an outcome perhaps closer to a win than any other before it. Although no new fund was created, the Commission formally clarified that the existing ESF+ fund could be used by member states on a voluntary basis for MVMC’s intended purpose. 

While the ECI’s implicit promise is that a successful initiative will trigger genuine institutional engagement, the record suggests that the Commission responds less to an initiative’s democratic weight and more to its alignment with existing institutional priorities.

This dynamic is not necessarily a flaw in the ECI itself. The ECI was never meant to function like a referendum. The deeper issue here is accountability: the Commission enjoys broad discretion in filtering citizen demands yet faces limited direct democratic accountability for rejecting them. A parliament that dismisses such demands can be voted out of office; the Commission cannot.

Sisyphean effort?

While the ECI has fallen short of its legislative ambitions, it has demonstrated a genuine capacity to mobilise citizen participation at a European scale. The 127 initiatives registered represent substantial civic engagement with EU institutions. Undergoing this process means meaningfully engaging with European law and understanding the legislative process that underlines the EU.

Moreover, successful ECIs often bring attention to issues that resonate across national boundaries and encourage cooperation between citizens from different member states. This transnational mobilisation contributes not only to procedural participation but also to the development of a shared European political identity – a feature equally important in legitimising the European system.

At the same time, it is notable that nearly all successful initiatives have strong moral dimensions: minority rights, reproductive rights, animal protection, etc. This pattern reflects the demanding nature of the process. Collecting the signatures requires significant time, resources and organisational capacity, as well as a level of motivational intensity that technical policy issues rarely generate. It is therefore unsurprising that the initiatives capable of crossing the threshold are those that evoke strong emotional mobilisation.

The result is a paradox. One million signatures represent too small a share of the EU’s population to be considered representative all EU citizens. At the same time, the threshold is sufficiently high to ensure that only initiatives backed by substantial organisational resources can realistically succeed.

To quote the EU Scream Podcast: “Why go through the bother of getting a million signatures when you can hire a lobbyist or buy a tractor?”

Reform

With this said, reform could move in two directions. A modest approach would accept the ECI for what it has become: a channel for structured participation – trying to make that channel wider and more accessible. Lowering the signature threshold would open the door to a broader range of voices, not just those with recourses. This could be paired with structured citizens’ panels, turning successful initiatives into deepened policy discussions.

A more ambitious path would give the ECI more political weight. Requiring any initiative that crosses the threshold to face a mandatory vote in the European Parliament would ensure that citizen demands receive formal democratic deliberation. Elected representatives would be compelled to take a public position on what their constituents have demanded, giving the initiatives more political weight.

The ECI was conceived as a bridge between citizens and the institutions that govern them. Twelve years on, it is a bridge that many have walked across, only to find the other side under permanent construction.

The views expressed in this #CriticalThinking article reflect those of the author(s) and not of Friends of Europe.