Stop TTIP demo
(BRUSSELS) – A European Citizens’ Initiative to stop the EU negotiating mandate for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the CETA trade deal with Canada was accepted Wednesday by the EU Commission.
The initiative’s formal registration on 10 July 2017 will start a one-year process of collection of signatures of support by its organisers.
The Commission’s initial refusal to register the ‘Stop TTIP’ Initiative in September 2014 was annulled by the General Court of the European Union in May this year. The Commission then decided not to appeal the judgement.
The belated registration – three years after the initial submission – means the request for a proposal not to sign CETA has become devoid of purpose, since it was signed on 30 October 2016.
The Commission stresses that its decision to register the Initiative concerns only the legal admissibility of the proposal, and that it has not analysed the substance at this stage.
The initiative now needs to receive one million statements of support within one year, from at least seven different Member States, to force the Commission to react within three months.
The Commission can decide either to follow the request or not, and in both instances would be required to explain its reasoning.
European Citizens’ Initiatives were introduced with the Lisbon Treaty and launched as an agenda-setting tool in the hands of citizens in April 2012, upon the entry into force of the European Citizens’ Initiative Regulation which implements the Treaty provisions. Once formally registered, a European Citizens’ Initiative allows one million citizens from at least one quarter of EU Member States to invite the European Commission to propose a legal act in areas where the Commission has the power to do so.
The conditions for admissibility, as foreseen by the European Citizens’ Initiative Regulation, are that the proposed action does not manifestly fall outside the framework of the Commission’s powers to submit a proposal for a legal act, that it is not manifestly abusive, frivolous or vexatious and that it is not manifestly contrary to the values of the Union.
