EU Citizen's initiative: If we let you that is

One of the (er is that the only) good things about the Lisbon Treaty was supposed to be the Citizen's Initiative. This was supposed to make it clear that, (Article 11, para 4)

"not less than one million citizens who are nationals of a significant number of Member States may take the initiative of inviting the Commission, within the framework of its powers, to submit any appropriate proposal on matters where citizens consider that a legal act of the Union is required for the purpose of implementing the Treaties"

The problem is that this allows I don't know people to ask awkward questions. It would allow Eurosceptics and others the opportunity to demand all sorts of changes, so it cannot be allowed to continue. Fortunately for the Eurocrats the language is wolly enough for them to have a whole great beanfeast of a program to rewrite the article.

So we got a Green Paper, a proposed regulation, and of course a consultation excercise. This was all summed up helpfully in a citizen's summary.

Now we have the end result of all this discussion. And blow me down what have we here?

Several changes to the EU "citizen's initiative" plan, to enable citizens to request EU laws, were made unanimously by Constitutional Affairs Committee MEPs on Tuesday. The changes include an earlier "admissibility" check on proposals, a lower threshold for the number of participating countries, and an easier petition signing process.

Yes, they have made it easier to take part (bravo) but only on petitions they agree with.

The whole ruddy thing has been deliberately emasculated, sorry, castrated, in order to stop the bvery thing it promised. That is the free expression of what people want.

They call it,

a more user-friendly citizens' initiative

It is transparently more establishment friendly.

Constitutional Affairs Committee MEPs suggest that, contrary to the Commission proposal to check the admissibility of an initiative only after 300,000 signatures have already been collected, the check be done already at the time of registering an initiative on the Commission web site. Checking earlier would ensure that citizens do not end up signing initiatives that do not meet the admissibility criteria.

These buggers are obviously frightened of the people. I hope, I really hope that that fear is justified.