International

One of the few democratic improvements contained in the Lisbon Treaty, the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI), is threatened by severe limitation in its implementation, fears SP Member of Parliament Harry van Bommel. The ECI enables anyone who can gather sufficient signatures to request the European Commission to come forward with a legislative initiative addressing their concerns. The Commission may not, however, be ensuring the availability of sufficient capacity to help citizens, meaning that certain initiatives would be unjustly rejected. 'Many people already feel themselves to be unrepresented in the European Union,’ Van Bommel warns. ‘The Commission should not be frustrating the only possibility for citizens of the member states to influence European policy. The Netherlands must tell the Commission this in no uncertain terms.’

It is assumed on all sides that ‘Europe’ will, for the first time in history, be a major theme in the election campaign for the Dutch national Parliament. That’s a good thing, not only because of the pressing urgency created by the ongoing crisis, but also because nothing less than our democracy and our economy are at stake.