Paper Titles & Abstracts

The European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) was introduced by the art. 11 of the Treaty of Lisbon and it allows one million EU citizens to participate in the development of EU policies, by calling on the European Commission to make a legislative proposal.The rules and procedures governing the citizens' initiative are set out in an EU Regulation adopted by the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union in February 2011. On April 1st 2012 the Regulation entered into force (L 65/1 - 11.3.2011) and the first initiatives have been registered. Fourteen initiatives are currently open and running, covering issues such as the environment, health, media, water, etc.In the nine months since the ECI started, not one of the 14 campaigns was able to gather signatures online because the so called "free" Online Collecting System (OCS) developed and offered by the EU didn't work and the administrative costs of fixing it were too high for the organizers. The ECI is an important tool of democracy but it shows some crucial problems. The paper will focus on the following topics:- The European Citizens Initiative doesn't call into question the Commission's right of initiative.- Can the ECI open the way to the involvement of civil society in the European Union decision making processes?- Can the ECI be considered a new form of transnational participatory democracy?