citizens' initiative

European Union

The Lisbon Treaty introduced the right of citizens to ask the European Commission to take a specific initiative through the "citizens' initiative". The new participatory democracy provision indicates that one million citizens coming from a significant number of member states may take the initiative of inviting the Commission to submit any appropriate proposal on matters where citizens consider that a legal act of the European Union is required for the purpose of implementing the Treaty of Lisbon. The details of this procedure will be set out in a regulation.

Given the importance of this new tool for citizens, civil society and stakeholders across the EU, from 11 November 2009 to 31 January 2010 the Commission carried out a broad public consultation on the basis of a Green Paper in order to seek the views of all interested parties on how the citizens' initiative should work in practice.

Following this public consultation, on 31 March 2010 the Commission adopted a proposal for a Regulation on the citizens' initiative.