The European Citizens' Initiative: Key issues in the Council

According to a freshly published Council document, the Spanish Presidency and the member states have identified four key issues that they need to deal with regarding the Commission proposal for the European Citizens' Initiative.

The four issues are:

• the registration of the proposed initiative with the Commission and the admissibility criteria;


• the minimum number of signatories per Member State;


• the procedures and conditions for the collection of statements of support; and


• the online collection system.

Under non of these four key issues mentioned in the four-page document the Council is actually looking at how to make cititzens' initiatives easier, except the fact that some unmentioned member states would like the Commission to check admissibility right at the start so that campaign organisers would not need to collect 300,000 useless signatures.

As for now, the Council plans to come to an agreement for "a general approach" until the end of June.

The Council thus seems more or less supportive of the Commission proposal, which I think is quite citizen unfriendly as of yet.