There is a new European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) entitled ‘European citizens' initiative for vegan meal' registered on October 18th 2022 by the European Commission.
ECI process
The European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) is a mechanism which enables EU citizens to participate in the development of EU policies. Steps:
- Organizers from at least 7 European countries present the proposal to the Commission for registration.
- After being registered, organizers have 6 months to start the official signature collection process. The vegan meal ECI is now on this stage.
- Once the signature phase is kicked-off, the ECI organizers have one year to collect one million statements of support and a minimum threshold from at least seven different Member States.
- In such case the Commission will have to react. The Commission could decide to take the request forward or not and will be required to explain its reasoning.
European citizens' initiative for vegan meal
The organizers of the initiative ask for a law requiring to explicitly make a vegan alternative available in private and public spaces selling food and drinks in Europe. Its organizers claim that this would address the emerging collective awareness of animal rights, as well as help fight the climate crisis by increasing the consumption of plant-based food and reducing the cost of food.
Initiative detail | European Citizens' Initiative (europa.eu) (it is easier to read if you open the pdf annex at the end of the page)
Tractability
I don’t have any idea how tractable it is. I don’t know the organizers. I don’t have any clue of how well positioned they are to reach 1 million signatures in one year. I also don’t know how the European Commission would react to the proposal.
I just thought it might be worth to share the ECI in this forum in case anyone is interested to have a deeper look.
Other ECIs on the animal-welfare space
ECIs that met the target and got an answer by the European Comission:
ECIs with signatures collection ongoing:
Great post Miguel! Thank you for sharing this!
I actually signed this iniciative 2-4(?) weeks ago before reading this excelent post of yours. I hope European Union EAs take some time to sign it.
I consider that well targeted petitions that have some luck and work behind them can have big impacts. At individual, local, national, continental and global levels. This type of european citizen iniciatives can rally supporters, bring the issue to the forefront, and influence politics and policy. Petitions are not the only hammers in existence to nail through problems but they can be one of various tools in the toolset.
We need more research into petitions. What impact they have? How to maximize its upsides and minimize downsides? We cannot ignore research on petitions for the risk that we may lose out the opportunity to find ways to make petitions better and the best petitions even better!