The European Citizens’ Initiative: A new sphere of EU politics?

Abstract

EU public policy is notoriously technical and consensus orientated, and dialogue between political institutions and interest groups enhance tendencies for inward looking and elite politics. The European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) seems to offer an opportunity to remedy these structural defects. We examine the entire set of more than sixty signature collection campaigns stimulated by the ECI for the degree of contention and type of campaign they bring to EU politics. A key feature of a majority of campaigns involves a diversity of origin, both by territory and campaign source. We record the diverse ways in which the ECI has been utilised by campaigners, noting how campaigns have largely been introduced by a markedly different set of activists than professionalised EU lobbyists, many newly mobilised by a direct participation device, and which may require EU lobby organisations to engage with new forms of campaigning. A key finding is that campaigns originating from sponsors already well linked to EU politics were less likely to be of a contentious nature than those from other sources.

EU Civil Society

“…Onward links from the ECI website to those of individual campaigns are another way of linking Citizens' Committees to advocacy organisations. Following these, and other, links, the European Citizens' Action Service's (ECAS) support unit for the ECI concludes that only eight of the 47 ECIs so far presented to the European Commission originate from EU-wide organisations, while as many campaigns originate from newly formed entities (European Citizen Action Service, 2014b; see also Bouza García and Greenwood, 2014). Most registered ECIs originate away from Brussels, either as part of transnational movements (rather than CSOs) or among advocacy organisations in the member states.…”

“…In a recent article, Bouza and Greenwood (2014) classified 'pilot initiatives', signature-collection campaigns, launched after the inclusion of the ECI in the Treaty but before it was developed, and official ECIs. These data are telling when it comes to agenda-setting strategies of ECI promoters and the framing of the ECIs.…”

“…Even if the disinterest and even a measure of distrust are clear, the question remains as to what extent the ECI mechanism is in competition with civil dialogue. The evidence so far is that ECI promoters compete in the same field as civil dialogue: the initiatives build on a range of traditional civil society issues, in particular environment and liberties/justice (Bouza García and Greenwood, 2014). This means that ECI promoters may often compete with other organisations for the attention of the Commission, which may be faced with the dilemma of listening to the demands of the promoters of a successful ECI and to the potentially more representative incumbents in the policy area.…”

“…Most registered ECIs originate away from Brussels, either as part of transnational movements (rather than CSOs) or among advocacy organisations in the member states. In addition to these are the 20 would-be campaigns which were refused registration by the European Commission, of which only two originate from EU CSOs (Bouza García and Greenwood, 2014;figures updated). The Director of the Greenpeace European Unit reflected:…”

“…Next, there will be an explanation of what a field transformation is and how the ECI contributes to it. The third section analyses data on past and ongoing ECIs, by Bouza García and Greenwood (2014), in order to find out whether the expectations that the ECI has of a field transformation potential are fulfilled.…”