3.2: What impact do European Citizens’ Initiatives have? Examples from successful initiatives

CitizenCentral

Government

5 • 1 Ratings

🗓️ 26 June 2023

⏱️ 29 minutes

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Summary

EU citizens often ask for examples of the impact of European citizens’ initiatives, so in this episode we take a closer look at three initiatives that reached more than 1 million signatures and received a reply from the Commission. We hear from an organiser of each of the three initiatives, ‘Ban glyphosate’ [Ban glyphosate and protect people and the environment from toxic pesticides], ‘End the Cage Age’, and ‘Right2Water’ [Water and sanitation are a human right! Water is a public good, not a commodity!]. On each initiative, we speak with European Commission officials who give more details on the actions taken in response to the successful initiatives. In 2023, the Commission replies to 4 more successful citizens’ initiatives [April, July and December].

Transcript

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0:00.0	That Europe finds itself itself at the front of the storm is not something new.
0:15.3	The world of tomorrow will be a different place.
0:17.9	It's good that Europe is ambitious in climate policy. We should be ambitious but also realistic.
0:22.6	The task is to learn to live within the boundaries Mother Earth has given us.
0:27.6	Only united we can defend our values, we can protect the interests of our citizens. Hello there and welcome to Citizen Central, the podcast series about the first transnational democracy instrument in the world, the European Citizens Initiative.
0:58.2	Yeah. the European Citizens Initiative. In today's chapter, we will look back on some of the successful ECIs,
1:03.1	those that gathered over a million signatures
1:05.3	and received an official response by the European Commission
1:09.0	to analyse the changes they managed to achieve in EU policy making.
1:13.6	We will take a look at three initiatives known as pan-glyphosate, end the cage age and right to water.
1:21.6	To start, we will reach out to Helmut Bushnoshadden, one of the leaders of a recent ECI, Save the Bees and
1:28.5	Farmers, towards a beef-friendly agriculture for a healthy environment.
1:32.9	This successful initiative received the Commission's response on April 5th of this year.
1:37.8	Helmut is somewhat of an ECI hero, as several years ago he also led another successful
1:43.3	ECI, ban glyphosate and protect people and the environment from toxic pesticides, which is what we'll talk about today.
1:51.0	Some of you may remember we interviewed him in the very first chapter of Citizen Central.
1:57.0	But for those who do not, here is what he told us back in the day about the Bang Glyphosate Initiative.
2:03.6	The first ECI that I was involved in was really very interesting and also very successful
2:11.6	because we got the million signatures within less than five months and we also got a real good response from the European
2:20.8	Commission because they responded to our second demand, which is to reform the authorization
2:26.3	procedure for pesticides in Europe by a legislative proposal, which made it necessary for chemical
2:33.9	industry to open their studies at the beginning
	...

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