The EU recently launched a ‘European citizens initiative’ to give civil society a greater voice in decision making at the EU level. This “direct democracy experiment” allows citizens to influence the EU agenda by gathering 1 million signatures from people that support any particular proposal for new legislation at the European Commission level. It is hoped that this will increase the public’s involvement and interaction with the EU’s institutions. They can collect signatures on the street, through social networking sites or by any other means they like, but for the proposal to be considered each country should have a minimum number of signatures. Although there are critics, some of whom are campaigners, many civil society organisations support the initiatives. Its introduction may prove useful not only in encouraging civil society participation in EU activities but may also encourage greater co-operation between citizen philanthropists and CSOs across the EU. Read the Time Magazine article, which discusses this.
