EU
s medborgarinitiativ
The European Union is struggling to maintain democracy and tries to increase the participation among the citizens in Europe. The European Citizens? Initiative, ECI, is a platform established by the European Commission to allow citizens to propose new legislation. ?Water and sanitation are a human right! Water is a public good, not a commodity!? is the first ECI that has met the requirements. Participatory democracy is an effective instrument to raise the democracy in EU but it requires inclusiveness and a serious response from the Commission. More than one year has lapsed since the first ECI was registered and several negotiations has taken place in order to establish a strategy so that water and sanitation become a human right among the member states in the EU. At this point the Commission has no ambition to pass the water and sanitation initiative as a legislative procedure because the requirements contradict the internal market rules. Unfortunately the ECI has not yet achieved its goals even though the Commission has acknowledged that water and sanitation are a human right. The ECI is still under development and so far it does not yet meet the ambition to decrease the democratic deficit within the EU.