23 Amendments of Andrea COZZOLINO related to 2014/2257(INI)
Amendment 5 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Considers the European Citizens’' Initiative (ECI) to be the first direct democratic instrument to enable citizens to become actively involved in the framing of European policies and legislation; and to connect them directly with EU institutions to discuss key issues at European level; Underlines that the ECI complements citizens' right to submit petitions to the European Parliament and their right of appeal to the European Ombudsman;
Amendment 10 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 a (new)
Paragraph 1 a (new)
1a. Welcomes the Commission's Report on the ECI of 1st of April 2015 acknowledging that there is still room to improve the ECI and identifying a number of possible issues with a view to improving the instrument; Equally welcomes the European Ombudsman's own-initiative enquiry into the functioning of the European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) which after a public consultation with ECI organisers and other civil society representatives formulated eleven concrete proposals to the Commission;
Amendment 15 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 c (new)
Paragraph 1 c (new)
1c. Welcomes the Commission's efforts aimed at improving the ECI process, but acknowledges that there are still a number of weaknesses in the current ECI setting; Urges the European Commission to truly commit itself to a comprehensive revision of the ECI which should aim at overcoming the existing barriers and bureaucratic hurdles, strengthening the role of the ECI and empowering all citizens with an effective tool of participatory democracy at European level;
Amendment 16 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. Recalls that, in previous resolutions and annual reports prepared by the Committee on Petitions, Parliament had already pointed out some of the weaknesses of the existing legal framework and the bureaucratic burdens in the practical running of the ECI owing to a lack of IT support and disparate use in the national administrations; calls for simplified and harmonised personal data requirements and proceduris of the opinion, therefore, that urgent revision of the ECI Regulation and Commission Implementing Regulation 1179/2011 is needed to ensure a clear, simple, user- friendly and proportionate procedures is implemented which will also encourage higher political participation by European citizens, which cannot be fully achieved with the current set of rules;
Amendment 24 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 a (new)
Paragraph 2 a (new)
2a. Stresses that a major simplification and revision of the ECI Regulation needs to focus on measures improving the accessibility to the ECI, both for organisers and for signatories, providing more dynamic and citizen-friendly process, and guaranteeing measures that have greater legal impact of the successful initiatives;
Amendment 27 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2 b (new)
Paragraph 2 b (new)
2b. Reports that to date only three initiatives managed to collect one million signatures in at least seven Member States, the first ever initiative was "Right2Water" and the most recent one is "Stop Vivisection ECI"; Regrets that the first two initiatives were not followed-up by a concrete legislative proposal and invites the Commission to adopt more concrete measures with the next successful initiatives;
Amendment 33 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Expresses its concern about the low percentage of successful initiatives and the dramatic decrease in the number of new initiatives; stresses that the European institutions and the Member States must take all necessary steps to promote the ECI and to foster citizens’ confidence in this tool; believes that if revised the instrument still has the potential to engage the public and to promote dialogue among citizens and between citizens and EU institutions; welcomes the fact that some ECIs have managed to have an impact at local level;
Amendment 42 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5
Paragraph 5
5. Reports that the general public's awareness and knowledge of the ECI among citizens is very low; Regrets the lack of clear information on the ECI instrument at the early stages, which led to a general misconception about its nature and generated some frustration when the first ECIs were rejected by the Commission; recalls that the instrument should be simple, clear and user-friendly;
Amendment 44 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 a (new)
Paragraph 5 a (new)
5a. Recommends that in order to build knowledge and trust in the ECI, the European institutions and Member States need to use every available communication channel, especially all relevant European Institutions' social and digital media platforms that have a combined following of many millions of citizens to conduct an ongoing awareness raising campaign to proactively promote ECI with the involvement of EU offices and representations as well as national authorities which should spread the concept of the ECI, and furthermore provide information in different national languages about on-going ECI initiatives;
Amendment 47 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 5 b (new)
Paragraph 5 b (new)
5b. Appreciates the Commission's efforts in updating its Guide to the European Citizens Initiative, and also in providing information and advice via its Europe Direct Contact Centre; Is of the opinion that more technical, legal and political support is needed to organisers of ECI initiatives in terms of launching and running an initiative, and in particular when drafting their ECI proposal, identifying a legal basis for it, respecting the strict IT requirements or national data protection rules;
Amendment 48 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 6
Paragraph 6
6. Calls for enhanced inter-institutional cooperation when dealing with ECIs in providing information and support to ECI organisers; calls for the future establishment of a physical and online ‘one-stop shop’ including providing multilingual websites, training programmes, educational material and a single set of guidelines on the right and obligation of the ECI organisers and on the administrative procedures through the ECI process; calls for the future establishment of a 'Citizen's Initiative Centre', designed as a one-stop shop support centre for any kind of ECI-related enquiry providing support, information, legtechnical, legal and political advice, translation services and funding, which could use the resources of the point of contact based in the Europe Direct Contact Centre and the Commission’'s representations and Parliament’'s information offices in the Member States; considers that such a set- up would bring the ECI project closer to citizens;
Amendment 53 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 6 a (new)
Paragraph 6 a (new)
6a. Invites the Commission to consider different options of providing administrative and financial support to the ECI projects through the existing budget lines of the Europe for Citizens Programme and the Rights, Equality and Citizens Programme;
Amendment 55 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 6 b (new)
Paragraph 6 b (new)
6b. Welcomes the European Economic and Social Committee's (EESC) new linguistic service for providing ECI organisers with translation of the ECI submission text in all EU languages for all validated ECIs and calls on the European Commission to propose a long term solution to provide the existing translation services in the institutions to the organisers of ECI initiatives so that translations of ECI texts are provided into all official languages and thus remove one major difficulty for citizens when organising cross-border ECI campaign in all Member States;
Amendment 59 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 7
Paragraph 7
7. CAgrees that the admissibility test at the beginning of the ECI process puts a legal burden on organisers and therefore calls on the Commission to ensure transparency in the decision-making process and clarify the procedure for legal admissibility; invites the Commission to respond to successful ECIs with more concrete actiIs interested in the decision of the European Court of Justice which should clarify whether the Commission applies the admissibility check too rigidly; Suggests meanwhile to the Commission to take a more flexible approach to the registration process and assist organisers in identifying a legal basis and in framing their proposal; invites the Commission to respond to successful ECIs with more concrete actions such as the preparation of a legal act on successful initiatives within 12 months of their acceptance and in case the Commission does not submit a proposal it needs to provide citizens with justifiable reasons;
Amendment 66 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 7 a (new)
Paragraph 7 a (new)
7a. Understands stakeholders' concerns with the collection of signatures and in particular when it comes to the different personal data requirements for signatories; Invites the European Commission and Member States to simplify and harmonise personal data requirements and procedures in order to facilitate the process for EU citizens wishing to sign an ECI and to further explore the possibility of creating a simplified voluntary online EU registry where citizens will be able to sign an ECI initiative;
Amendment 72 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 8
Paragraph 8
8. Welcomes Commission's efforts to launch and improve the online signature (OCS) collection system; Acknowledges, however, that further efforts are needed to completely redesign and customise the OCS; Calls on the Commission to improve the online collection system (OCS) software and make it accessible to persons with disabilities, allow for electronic signatures and for the collection of e-mail addresses and to link it to the new relevant social and digital media tools, and include the most up-to-date online campaigning features, following the example of other successful online campaigning platforms; calls on the Commission to support the creation of a public ECI application for mobile devicesand smart devices; Suggests as well that the Commission turns this temporarily provided server for the collection of online signatures into a permanent solution of a centralised, user- friendly and free of charge central public online collection platform;
Amendment 75 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 8 a (new)
Paragraph 8 a (new)
8a. Invites the Commission to revise the ECI regulation to clarify when the period of collecting signatures will start and proposes that this should be when the OCS certification is completed;
Amendment 76 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 8 b (new)
Paragraph 8 b (new)
8b. Reiterates that every citizen has the right to participate in the democratic life of the Union by way of a European citizens' initiative and calls for actions at European and national levels to ensure that specific groups of people such as European citizens living abroad, disabled or older people are not denied their right to sign an initiative; urges the Commission and Member States to implement simpler and uniform online and offline signature collection rules to ensure that all EU citizens can support an ECI;
Amendment 77 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 8 c (new)
Paragraph 8 c (new)
8c. Recalls PETI position that in order to encourage the civic participation of the younger generation in EU affairs on important topics such as jobs, education or the environment there is a need in the context of the ECI to uniformly lower the age limit to 16;
Amendment 80 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 9
Paragraph 9
Amendment 83 #
Draft opinion
Point 10
Point 10
Amendment 87 #
Draft opinion
Point 11
Point 11
11. Invites the Commission, in light of the up-coming judgment of the European Court of Justice to clarify whether the EU citizens have the same powers as the European Parliament to propose Treaty amendments and to consider in the future revision of the regulation the proposal for allowing ECIs that require treaty amendments according to Article 48 TFEU;
Amendment 90 #
Draft opinion
Point 12
Point 12
12. Recalls that hearings concerning successful ECIs are currently organised by the competent committee, according to the subject of the ECI, with the Committee on Petitions associated; proposes that the Committee on Petitions should take over the role of organising hearings, as a neutral forum with the greatest experience in dealing with citizens., after which the relevant Committee should issue an own initiative report followed by a discussion and vote on each successful ECI in full plenum; invites the European Parliament to further explore the possibilities of organising hearings for initiatives that haven't reached the one million signatures but have more than half of the required signatures;