The European Citizens Initiative: Now, Then and What Lies Ahead

Four years ago, there were high hopes for the European Citizens' Initiative (ECI). The ECI represented a new instrument of participatory democracy; a pan-European tool which could enable citizens to place the issues they consider important at the heart of EU policy-making. The initial concept was simple: if an ECI manages to gather one million signatures in at least seven different Member States, EU citizens can ask the European Commission to legislate on a matter of its competence