The ECI Watch is the newsletter of the ECI Support Centre. The ECI Support Centre is a joint initiative of the European Citizen Action Service, Democracy International and the Initiative and Referendum Institute Europe.
On May 28th, the European Commission refused the European Citizens' Initiative "One of Us" which aimed to end the financing of "research that destroys human life before birth". The ECI was able to receive more than the 1 million signatures needed, coming in at 1,721,626 valid signatures.
The Commission stated that its reasons for declining are that it recently made a decision on the ethical rules and restriction in place for EU-funded research which prevents the destruction of embryos. One of Us organizers voiced their dissatisfaction by stating that the "European Commission was unjustified and anti-democratic”.
Want to know about your favourite ECI's; how many signature were collected or how much funding was attained? Do you want to be able to track ECI's by country? Click here to download the ECI Table(209 KB).
Democracy International Fundraising Campaign
The ECI Support Centre is seeking funding to develop an application for iPhone users that would make it possible to sign ECIs via smartphone. The ECISC has already developed the technology for android users, and it has been a huge success in making ECIs more available to citizens. In addition, the app also provides information such as: the number of signatures collected, deadlines, and contact information. Developing this technology for iPhone users would expand our reach to all smartphones and allow more individuals easy access to ECIs.
Click here to donate and support innovative ways of promoting participatory democracy!
As of the 1st of July a new national threshold for signature collection entered into force. This decision was based on the altered numbers of MEPs for many Member States(Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Ireland, Greece, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Austria, Portugal and Romania) for the 2014 European Parliamentary elections.
