02/03/2026
This week, the Commission responded to My Voice, My Choice, the ECI demanding EU-funded solidarity for women unable to access safe abortion in their home countries.
Over 1.1 million Europeans had signed. The European Parliament had voted in favour. The democratic signal could not have been clearer.
The response came with real political weight: the prime ministers of Denmark, Estonia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden had jointly called on the Commission to act – the first time heads of government have ever publicly backed a citizens’ initiative.
The Commission’s response should be welcomed – even if it falls short of establishing a new dedicated fund, opting instead to clarify that member states can voluntarily use the existing European Social Fund Plus. It is a genuine step forward, albeit a modest one.
For other successful ECIs, citizens are still waiting. Years later.
End the Cage Age gathered 1.4 million signatures and, in 2021, secured a formal Commission commitment to legislate a ban on cage farming by the end of 2023. That deadline passed. Then 2024. Now 2026. No proposal has ever come. The ECI Citizens’ Committee took the Commission to the Court of Justice of the EU. Next Thursday, March 5, the hearing takes place in Luxembourg. The Good Lobby’s legal team will be there, representing Eurogroup for Animals as third-party intervener.
Fur Free Europe collected 1.5 million signatures – the largest ECI ever. The Commission published a communication in December 2023, promising to assess whether to propose a ban on fur farming by March 2026. That deadline is now. Yet while the Commission was preparing its response, it held a workshop with the fur industry behind closed doors, while ECI organisers’ requests to meet Commissioner Várhelyi went unanswered. The Good Lobby supported a complaint to the European Ombudsman on exactly this – a breach of political equality in stakeholder engagement that goes to the heart of democratic legitimacy.
Stop Finning brought over 1.1 million signatures demanding an end to the EU shark fin trade. The Commission responded with a communication in July 2023 and promised an impact assessment. Two and a half years later, no legislative proposal is in sight. The Good Lobby is now advising the organisers on how to pursue the Commission’s mishandling of this ECI.
The pattern is unmistakable. The ECI was designed as a democratic agenda-setting tool, a mechanism giving European citizens a direct pathway into EU lawmaking. What it has become, in practice, is an extremely cumbersome instrument for civil society to use, highly dependent on the public salience it may gain (or most often failed to gain), and whose outcome remains highly uncertain even when successufull.
It works when the Commission seizes, when it is convenient to it otherwise it quietly shelves when it is not. When those conditions are absent, 1.5 million citizens can wait indefinitely, with no remedy and no accountability.
Yesterday was genuinely historic. Let us also be honest about what it reveals: EU participatory democracy remains at the mercy of institutional discretion that is, so far, virtually unconstrained.
That is what three pending, successful-yet-ignored ECIs remind us. And what The Good Lobby is now trying to change – before the Ombudsman and the Court of Justice of the EU.