I have no doubt that the in initiative will be used for exactly the kind of posturing you envisage – and worse on top of it. What happens when a million citizens sign a petition asking for the expulsion of the US ambassador to Brussels because of the next unpopular occupant of the White House? There are easily a million crazy anti-Americans in the EU. What happens when a petition is filed to grant autonomy to the Basque region? The obvious answer is that those petitions will be ignored, but yet they will have served to highlight divisive and politically toxic divisions within European Society. (What happens, by the way, when one million Muslims sign a petition asking for the right to set up Sharia courts?).

The kind of issues that win a million signatures are also often issues which are dear to small, and sometimes extremist sections of society. By giving those sections a voice, particularly on controversial issues, you elevate their prominence. By dismissing their issues, without a full discussion, you serve only to further alienate those groups from the society they are supposed to belong to. It serves only to pervert democratic discussion, and store up resentment.

Of course, most petitions will be ignored by the media. But the three I mention above, and your own example, are too juicy not to be covered extensively and be discussed at length in op-ed and news pages continent-wide. As a result, the reasonable petitions will be lost, and the crazy ones highlighted. It’s a bad idea.

That said, I think it opens up one more interesting possibility, politically. If opponents of the EU are clever enough to organise petitions on various embarrassing issues, like the budget, or accountability, then we may start to see the development of an actual European Polity. Ironically, the one upside is probably the one the petition system was designed to avoid.

I would contend that the EU’s supposed ‘democratic deficit’ is definitely overstated. What the EU really suffers from is a ‘communication deficit’. Citizens do not identify with the EU or its institutions and there are of course issues of democratic control and legitimacy. Often I think there is too much information, which makes it even harder to find what I’m looking for. However, I think that you will find that the treaty that has just come into force does go some way to addressing these issues. Let us remember that the citizens of Europe are represented in the European Council by their elected governments. That citizens feel a distance from the European Parliament can be strongly linked with the lack of willingness of the political parties contesting these elections to do so on any basis other than national politics. And importantly, I think that the heads of state all came together and decided that the top two EU posts were going to be purely administrative. So I wouldn’t worry about Mr van Rompuy or Ms Ashton any more than I would the Secretary General of the Civil Service or the nation’s top ambassador.

Perhaps there is too much emphasis on the democratic nature of the European Parliament to the detriment of that of the European Council. But then this is probably a consequence of a different vision for the EU. More power to the Parliament might mean a gentle slide into federalism while a consolidation of the European Council would definitely swing the European project back towards our beloved consociationalism.

I’m not worried about any laws being enforced through the citizens’ initiative. What I am more concerned about is the perception that this might generate both within and outside the EU. Potentially, we are giving a much greater voice to marginal opinions that may include racist groups. Instead of creating an atmosphere of inclusion (something I believe the Union does) it may work in the opposite direction. So even though there is no competence in this area, there may be need to worry. Not that perception becomes reality but that it does strongly impact on it.

It will be open until 31.01.2010 so get moving if you’ve got something to say!

The flagship result of the Lisbon Treaty’s ratification was the appointment of two top figures who did not need to be elected to get there. More importantly, the relationship between the European Parliament and the populations that vote for its members is incredibly distant, and for most considered entirely peripheral, therefore largely beyond public scrutiny and acountability. We’ve had a storm over MPs expenses in the UK – but the anecdotal evidence thus far suggests it’s far worse in Brussells, yet populations and media agencies can’t be bothered to reckon with it.

Thanks for the comment. Hope that the bitterness of the France-Ireland game is starting to move away by now. Anyway the Citizens’ Initiative, should not spawn referendums in the EU but they will be a way of pressuring the Commission and governments more generally. They will allow citizens to petition the European Commission to bring forward new policy proposals. Of course, what all this will mean in the long run I’m not sure and I’ll wait to see how the process develops. In terms of numbers of citizens required, I do find that 1 million citizens is a very low threshold – accounting for approximately 0.2% of the population (of course it’s slightly higher when you narrow it down to include only those of voting age). I’ve never been a fan of arbitrary numbers but I would think that a population of 500 million should leave the number a little higher than a paltry 1 million. Germany has a threshold of 5% I believe to prevent extremist parties winning parliamentary seats. 5% may be too high for what is only an initiative and not a referendum but the low number does worry me.

I can see you forsee problems with the relatively small number of signatures required for an EU referundum, what would be a good amount considering the size of some individual nations etc..?