The content of the initiative
When in 2011 the European Union adopted the Regulation on the European Citizen Initiative, creating a formal mechanism for EU citizens to directly address to the EU institution a petition requesting them to address specific issues through a new legislative act, ONE OF US was one of the first European Citizen Initiatives (ECIs) to be launched.
Following an invitation by Carlo Casini, then a Member of the European Parliament and President of the Parliament’s Committee on Constitutional Affairs, pro-life groups from all EU countries joined forces and requested the European Union to adopt legislation that would ban the EU from supporting or financing any action implying or presupposing the destruction of human embryos.
More specifically, the initiative requested the insertion into the EU’s Financial Regulation of an ethics clause clearly and specifically outlawing the financing of such activities. In addition to that, similar clauses were to be inserted into the legal frameworks of the EU Research Program “Horizon 2020” and into the Regulation creating a Financial Instrument for the EU’s Development Cooperation.
These requests were contained in a ready-made draft legislative proposal, which formed an integral part of the initiative.
ONE OF US is and remains the most successful ECI so far
This initiative collected 1.721.626 statements of support from citizens all over Europe.
Among the more than 120 European Citizen Initiatives that have been registered since 2012, only 12 have collected more than 1 million signatures, which was set as the threshold for obliging the EU institutions to issue a formal response. Among these 12 initiatives, ONE OF US remains until today – by a wide margin – the one that has received the strongest support from European citizens.
In other words, of all the requests European citizens have ever directly brought to the EU and its institutions in this way, the protection of human dignity and unborn human lives remains the most widely supported and the most pressing.
The EU Institutions’ inadequate reply to ONE OF US
As a legally required follow-up to the successful collection of signatures, representatives of ONE OF US were invited to a meeting with the Commissioner responsible for Research, Innovation and Science, Ms Geoghegan-Quinn, and the Deputy Director-General responsible for Development and Cooperation, Mr. Cornaro on 09/04/2014.
A public hearing took place at the European Parliament on 10/04/2014. (A full video of that hearing is available on the Parliament’s website, with simultaneous interpretation into all EU languages).
It was widely expected at the time that a successful ECI with more than one million signatures would trigger a greater impact than the kind of petition that any individual citizen can at any time address to the EU and its institutions. Indeed, it seemed reasonable to expect that the European Commission would take up the legislative proposal that had been elaborated by ONE OF US and formally submit it to the European Union’s co-legislators, the European Parliament and the Council, so as to allow the legislative process to go forward and to make it possible for the Parliament and the Council to deliberate on it.
Unfortunately however, these legitimate expectations were not met.
At the European Parliament, a well-organized group of MEPs radically opposed to human dignity and human rights attempted to use clever procedural tricks to allocate themselves more speaking time in which they could disparage the successful initiative than the organisers had available to present it. While one would expect such a hearing to provide an opportunity for parliamentarians to attentively listen to the people, those hostile MEPs tried to hijact the event and turn it into its exact opposite, a tribune for themselves to promote their anti-life views. Only the threat by representatives of ONE OF US to boycott the hearing led to a somewhat more appropriate distribution of speaking time. (At the very end of the video, however, one can see how the moderator of the hearing, who was clearly hostile to the initiative’s cause, made a brazen attempt to misrepresent the initiative, suggesting that it was pursuing objectives that lie outside the EU’s competences. The many supporters of ONE OF US present in the room protested vehemently, and the representative of ONE OF US had to correct her.)
The European Commission‘s formal response to the initiative was equally inadequate. Despite being a merely administrative body the composition of which Europen citizens have little or no means to influence through their democratic votes, the Commission decided to not submit a legislative proposal, thus brazenly using its “monopoly of initiative” under the EU Treaties in a brazenly anti-democratic and destructive manner, effectively blocking the European Parliament and the Council, i.e. the EU the institutions whose composition can be influenced by the outcome of elections, from dealing with the initiative in a meaningful way.
“EU primary legislation explicitly enshrines human dignity, the right to life, and the right to the integrity of the person. The EU Financial Regulation states that all EU expenditure should comply with EU primary legislation. Therefore the Commission does not see a need to propose changes to the Financial Regulation.” – This part of the answer seemed disingenuous, as it failed to provide a convincing reason why it should be neither possible nor desirable to include in the Financial Regulation an explicit prohibition to fund activities involving or presupposing the destruction of human embryos, in particular if in any case the EU had, according to the Commission’s claims, no intention to ever fund such activities. Indeed, if a ban of such funding were uncontroversial, this would be all the more a good reason for enacting it, whereas, if it were controversial, one cannot claim it to be “unnecessary”.
“The Commission considers that the Horizon 2020 provisions on human embryonic stem cell research are in full accordance with the EU Treaties and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.48 It also considers that these provisions already address a number of important requests of the organisers notably that the EU does not fund the destruction of human embryos and that appropriate controls are put in place. The Commission considers, however, that the request of the organisers that the EU does not fund research subsequent to the establishment of human embryonic stem cell lines cannot be met. The reason is that the Commission formulated its proposal taking into account ethical considerations, potential health benefits, and the added value of support at EU level, for all types of stem cell research. This proposal was adopted by the co-legislator, i.e. the European Parliament and the Council, based on an agreement democratically reached during the inter-institutional negotiations.” – This part of the answer allows for the conclusion that the Commission actually did intend to fund ethically controversial research projects on human embryos, and that it did not want the successful ONE OF US initiative get into its way.
“The Commission concludes that the EU currently has the necessary legal framework to effectively manage EU development funding in a way that helps minimise the number of abortions performed in developing countries. While the Citizens’ Initiative does not directly challenge the core objectives and commitments of the MDGs and the ICPD programme of action, the Commission considers that a funding ban would constrain the Union’s ability to deliver on the objectives set out in the MDGs, particularly on maternal health, and the ICPD, which were recently reconfirmed at both international and EU levels.” – The evasive wording clearly shows that the Commission neither was able, nor intended, to excluse that some of its development aid funding was actually used to fund abortion as part of “reproductive health”. Moreover, it appears to be based on a spurious claim that the ICPD programme of action actually mandates the funding of abortions, and – even more cynically – that the funding ban proposed by ONE OF US would somehow prevent the EU from delivering on objectives such as “maternal health”. Implicitly, the Commission seemed to frame the destruction of embryos as a “therapy” that was needed to preserve “health”.
The Federation is founded
Following this disingenuous and inadequate response from the EU institutions, the ONE OF US Federation was founded as a more permanent platform to continue pursuing the objectives of the citizens’ initiative.
Litigation before the EU Courts
As a first step, the organisers of ONE OF US challenged the Commission’s response before the EU courts.
Both the initial application and the reply to the Commission’s response are reproduced on this website, allowing the interested reader to form his own judgment.
This litigation was partially successful in that ONE OF US prevailed with its position that the Commission’s formal response to a successful ECI constitutes a legal act that is subject to review by the courts. (The Commission had denied this and thus, in a sense, claimed for itself the right to discharge its obligation to respond to an ECI with a statement that did not need to meet even the lowest quality standards.)
Both the Tribunal of First Instance and the Court of Justice, however, confirmed that, thanks to its “monopoly of initiative”, the Commission was under no circumstance obliged to launch a legislative procedure as a reaction to an ECI that, like ONE OF US, had collected more than one million statements of support and submitted a ready-to-use legislative proposal. Despite what one might have believed, the ECI Regulation did not have the purpose of giving to EU citizens, even to 1 million or more of them, a “right to initiative”, which remains thus a monopoly that the European Commission can use as it pleases.
The outcome of the litigation, disappointing as it may be, therefore concerns only the constitutional set-up of the EU. As such, it weakens the instrument of the European Citizens’ Initiative, which had been touted as an important breakthrough in overcoming the EU’s often deplored “democracy deficit”. It raises the question why anyone should undertake the herculean task of collecting 1 million or more signatures in at least seven different European countries, when the outcomes (i.e., a poorly drafted, disingenuous and insipid response letter by the European Commission, and a hearing in the European Parliament that can be brazenly hijacked by some radical MEPs to promote the opposite of the objectives that are sought by the citizens supporting the petition) are such as they have been in this case. The conclusion for all citizens, irrespective of the concrete issues they are seeking to be dealt with, must be that organising an ECI makes no sense at all when one must assume that the European Commission does not sympathise with the objective sought. And when the Commission does sympathise with the objective, organising an ECI is not necessary, because a discreet meeting with Commission officials behind closed doors will usually be sufficient…)
ONE OF US takes pride in having fought on behalf of democracy and human rights, even though with limited success. With their respective decisions, both the Tribunal of First Instance and the Court of Justice have thus done a terrible disservice to democracy (and, as a consequence, to the EU whose “democracy deficit” continues being deplored by many). However, neither of the two instances has vindicated the lamentable quality and apparent inadequacy of the Commission’s opinion, nor did they question the necessity and legitimacy of ONE OF US’s demand for a better protection of the human right to life.
one-of-us.org 